François Villeroy de Galhau: Monetary policy making under uncertainty

Speech by Mr François Villeroy de Galhau, Governor of the Bank of France, at the Bank of France/Deutsche Bundesbank conference, Paris, 21 June 2018.

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

Central bank speech  | 
14 August 2018

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good morning and welcome to Paris for the 6th joint conference organised by the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Banque de France. I would like to thank the organisers Emmanuel Fahri, Emanuel Moench and Benoit Mojon for assembling such an interesting set of papers. I will return to the topic of the conference later.

I would like to use my opening remarks this morning to discuss a highly topical challenge for monetary policy: how to enhance confidence and how to respond to policy-induced uncertainty. We obviously live in an increasingly uncertain world. The lack of predictability of US trade policy – or worse, its protectionism – and the lack of clarity about Brexit risks reversing many of the gains of a globally integrated economy. The euro area itself is seeing a return of uncertainty. Winston Churchill once famously said: “true genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous and conflicting information". Obviously we, Central Bankers, do not claim to be geniuses, but our duty as policy makers, is to deal with this uncertainty, while sticking to our mandate.