Hello, I'm Paige and this is the Euro Intelligence podcast covering current affairs in the EU and Euro area.

I am joined by Wolfgang and Susanna, directors of Eurointelligence in Oxford.

Okay, so the big story this week was the ECB Policy Review. Wolfgang, you wrote about it this morning and you were actually seemed quite pleased with the outcome. Can you explain why that is?

I was pleased because they didn't do as much

as I feared they would do, which is kind of rare for us. Normally, we've been, you know, we've been kind of

acting, outcalling for people to act and do more and for me to say that the ECB did a good job.

I don't think this ever happened before. But I thought that did a good job. And the reason

that did a good job was because they didn't make mistakes. Because we are not in a position

yet. I mean, I'm, you know, as I'm sort of arguing in my next column is that, you know, in the long

run, they central banks have to do some very deep thinking about

their monetary policy strategies. But we're not there yet. We know the old world doesn't work

anymore, but we haven't yet found a little of a new framework for the new world. What the ECB

did, it did a minimalist shift. It got rid of that asymmetric inflation target. It was this sort of absurd

formulation of an inflation rate of close to but below 2%. And that was not a good, you know,

that gave rise to very different expectations. The Germans thought it was well under 2. The Italian

man understood it as 2. For practical purposes, the ECB used 2% in its own sort of models.

It didn't include the asymmetry in the general policy setting.

But it was a communication disaster.

And this morning, the German papers wrote, oh, ECB raises target.

Because that's relative to what they understood before.

But in reality reality they didn't

raise the target they never they never interpreted the inflation target the way the germans did

...