The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) plays a central role in setting ECB policy and communicating policy choices to a wider audience. Governing Council Members regularly give speeches commenting on policy challenges, providing forward guidance to markets, and justifying the policy choices made by the institution. This study unveils the policy focus of the ECB Governing Council as found in the speeches that Governing Council Members gave between 1999 and 2016. Using a dynamic topic modelling approached based on non-negative matrix factorisation, we demonstrate how the issues discussed by Governing Council members have evolved over time, and how the policy content of Governing Council Member speeches has responded to the economic crisis and the political/economic context of the times in which they speak. In doing so, we demonstrate how different parts of the ECB mandate including price stability, full employment, and balanced economic growth, are emphasised at different points in time and by different Governing Council Members. Our findings speak to the literatures on banking reform, Central Bank mandates, and the evolution of policy agendas.
