Isabel Schnabel: From market neutrality to market efficiency

Welcome address by Ms Isabel Schnabel, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the ECB DG-Research Symposium "Climate change, financial markets and green growth", Frankfurt am Main, 14 June 2021.

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

On behalf of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the co-organizers – the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) – I am pleased to welcome you to the Symposium "Climate Change, Finance and Green Growth". While all of us would certainly have preferred to convene in person, the event's virtual format does at least have the welcome side effect of lowering our carbon footprint.

The programme of the Symposium is highly topical: it features six state-of-the-art academic papers and a moderated discussion focusing on the interaction between climate policies, financial markets and sustainable development.

The Symposium underscores the ECB's commitment to better understand the consequences of climate change for output and inflation, to explore the role that central banks can play in fostering the transition to a low-carbon economy, and to support high-quality academic research on climate change.

In view of the Symposium's agenda, my opening remarks will focus on the scope for the ECB to contribute to the global fight against climate change. While this topic is also an important element of the ECB's ongoing monetary policy strategy review, my remarks should not be seen as an indication of its eventual outcome.