Bundesbank Executive Board member Sabine Mauderer has dampened expectations about a possible tiering system for deposit rates, which would exclude some reserves held at the central bank from negative rates as a way of easing the burden on banks. “I wouldn’t make too much of that kind of relief,” she told the “Handelsblatt” newspaper, “nor has it been established whether there is even a monetary policy case for introducing a tiering system.”

Bundesbank Executive Board member Burkhard Balz says that Europe should be aiming to create payments solutions and platforms of its own. “Here in Europe, we need to prevent a situation from arising in which American and Chinese payment systems are all we have left to choose between,” he said in an interview with Germany’s “Handelsblatt” newspaper. 

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann takes a critical view of the agreement struck by the Italian government and the European Commission over the budget dispute. In an interview with the German newspaper “Welt am Sonntag”, he noted that the original promise to reduce the deficit is now off the table. “Looking ahead, the Commission and other governments will find it harder still to insist on sound government finances,” he argued.

Bundesbank Executive Board member Joachim Wuermeling has spoken out in favour of further advancing a European financial market union. “A further opening-up of the internal market in financial services is the only way to make the European economy less dependent on financial hubs outside the euro area in the long term”, he said in an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper.

According to Bundesbank Executive Board member Joachim Wuermeling, the results of the recent stress test demonstrate that European banks are well-equipped for difficult times. However, in his opinion, action still needs to be taken: in an interview with the Sunday edition of the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, he said that “profitability does need to be improved”.

Bundesbank Executive Board member Joachim Wuermeling has announced a digital agenda for the Bundesbank for 2019. In an interview with the Börsen-Zeitung, Mr Wuermeling said that new instruments, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, offer enormous potential for banking supervisors to fulfil their statutory mandate even better in the future. 

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann says that monetary policy is facing a period of normalisation. "But it’s a long path fraught with stiff challenges, and the final destination still hasn’t been pinpointed," he told Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper. Mr Weidmann stressed that uncertainty around the inflation outlook is receding and that it would be wrong to ignore the risks associated with what remains an ultra-loose monetary policy stance.