ECB Listens Portal: topics and questions
We asked for your views – and we heard you!
We gathered your views, suggestions and concerns on a range of topics via the ECB Listens Portal to better understand your perspectives on the economy, and what you expect from your central bank. On this page, you can see the questions we asked in the Portal.
What does price stability mean for you?
The main contribution central banks can make to improving people’s welfare is to maintain price stability. You may have heard about our recent measures to help counter the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. These have the overall aim of keeping prices stable. If the rate of inflation (the rate at which consumer prices increase on average from one year to the next) is positive, low and stable, this situation is consistent with price stability. We currently aim at an inflation rate below, but close to, 2% over the medium term.
- How do changes in general price levels affect you/your organisation and your members?
- Are you concerned about either deflation or inflation being too high?
- For which types of goods and services do you feel the effects of price changes most?
- When you think about inflation, how relevant do you find the increase in the cost of housing?
What are your economic expectations and concerns?
We conduct monetary policy to make sure that the euro holds its value over time. To make our monetary policy as effective as possible, we want to better understand your expectations, as well as your economic concerns.
- What economic concerns are you/your organisation and your members facing?
- How have changing economic conditions affected you in the last decade and especially in the current economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic? For example, how have they affected your prospects of finding a job?
- How do low interest rates and monetary policy in general affect you/your organisation, your members and the overall economy?
What other topics matter to you?
The ECB’s main task, its “primary objective”, is to maintain price stability in the euro area. However, once price stability is guaranteed, it is the ECB’s task to support the general economic policies of the European Union. These include, for example, the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth, a highly competitive social market economy aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment.
- Do you think the ECB should give more or less attention to these other considerations and why?
- Are there other issues not mentioned above that you think the ECB should be concerned with when setting its policies?
- How will climate change have an impact on you/your organisation, your members and the economy?
How can we best communicate with you?
We know that understanding how monetary policy works helps people make decisions about how to spend, save, invest or borrow money. We would like to find out how successful we have been in explaining what we do and why we do it.
- To what extent do you feel well informed about the ECB/your national central bank, for example, concerning the recent measures taken in response to the coronavirus crisis?
- How could the ECB/the Eurosystem improve the way it explains the benefits of price stability and the risks of inflation being too high or too low?
- What could we do to improve your understanding of the decisions we take and how they affect you?