Mr. Gabriel Makhlouf:

This is one of the most important policy areas that the Central Bank is responsible for. The Deputy talked about rules regarding loan-to-income ratios. Essentially, the borrower-based measures were introduced in 2015. Since they worked very well for six years or whatever, we decided that we ought to review the whole framework to make sure that they would work well for the following six years. I am a great believer in reviewing things, even if they are going well, because it is important that they are sustainable for the longer term. We started a pretty comprehensive review of the measures, which included international conferences, commissioning research papers and consultation of the public, and we came to our conclusions. These were announced in September 2022. The monetary policy decisions that we made at the ECB did not play a part in the judgments that we were making on the macro-prudential framework or the borrower-based measures. They essentially need to function almost irrespective of what is happening in monetary policy.