ECB Annual Report for 2014

The range of efforts in which the European Central Bank (ECB) was engaged in 2014 was, by any historical standard, extraordinary. It gives me great satisfaction to be able to report here how the ECB, its Executive Board, its staff and the Eurosystem committees responded to challenges and empowered the Governing Council to deliver on our mandate and our responsibilities.

In 2014 various strands of work initiated in previous years came together to produce a consistent policy response, one that allows us now to envisage with confidence that the weak and uneven recovery experienced in 2014 will turn into a more robust, sustainable upturn – and that inflation will return without undue delay to the ECB’s objective of below, but close to, 2% over the medium term.

From a monetary policy perspective, the environment we faced in 2014 was complex. The muted recovery that had begun in 2013 did not accelerate as initially expected. Monetary growth remained subdued and credit continued to contract, albeit at a gradually slower pace. [...]

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