Mario Draghi: Stabilisation policies in a monetary union

Speech by Mr Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, at the Academy of Athens, Athens, 1 October 2019.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

The resilience of the euro area through many years of crisis has proven its critics to be wrong. Several countries, not least Greece, have undertaken remarkable efforts in order to thrive as members of the monetary union. Important institutional reforms have taken place to strengthen the euro area, notably the creation of the banking union and the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). As I have outlined elsewhere, the euro has been beneficial in many ways, and today the single currency is more popular than ever.

But the fact that the crisis lasted much longer here than in other advanced economies - and came with a substantial social cost - still weighs on perceptions of our monetary union. Have we learned the lessons of that episode? And have we taken the necessary steps to prevent such an outcome in the future? These are the questions I would like to address today.