Growing pains: the story of the euro

Yves Mersch, former governor of the Banque Centrale du Luxembourg, is the sole member of the European Central Bank governing council to have served continually since the bank’s establishment in 1998. In this conversation with David Marsh, Mersch surveys the ups and downs of the euro’s development, seminal changes under the ECB’s four presidents, Wim Duisenberg, Jean-Claude Trichet, Mario Draghi and Christine Lagarde, as well as progress in the ECB’s crisis-fighting capacity and response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He assesses the ECB’s handling of its now widened responsibilities assuring both monetary and financial stability, the future of its emergency bond purchase programme, and whether the ECB’s policy review, due to conclude in autumn 2021, will result in significant changes in its operational mandate and procedures.