Keynote speech by Philip R. Lane, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the Danish Economic Society Conference

Kolding, 9 January 2026

I am grateful to the Danish Economic Society for the invitation to participate in this conference. In line with the overall theme of the event, I will speak today about the implications of a changing world for the euro-denominated monetary system.

In our 2025 assessment exercise that reviewed the monetary policy strategy of the ECB, the Governing Council concluded that:

“Ongoing structural shifts related to geopolitics, digitalisation, artificial intelligence, demography, the threat to environmental sustainability and changes in the international financial system suggest that the inflation environment will remain uncertain and potentially more volatile, with larger target deviations in both directions, posing challenges for the conduct of monetary policy. A more resilient financial architecture – supported by progress on the savings and…