On 13 March 2024, the ECB Governing Council decided on changes to the operational framework for implementing monetary policy. These changes will affect how central bank liquidity will be provided as excess liquidity in the banking system, while remaining significant over the coming years, gradually declines.

Prior to the global financial crisis starting in 2007, the Eurosystem’s operational framework for implementing monetary policy used to be a corridor system. This involved the ECB Governing Council setting three interest rates, which usually had the same distance from each other. The rates of the deposit facility and the marginal lending facility formed the lower and upper bounds of the corridor, respectively. The relevant key interest rate on the main refinancing operations was the middle of the interest rate corridor. This system aimed to steer short-term money market rates close to the main refinancing operations rate.

Kultur im Fokus: Frankfurt ist nicht nur Finanz-, sondern auch Kulturmetropole. Das möchten wir in diesem Format unterstreichen und rücken neben klassischen Bundesbankthemen Musik, Poetry Slam und Co. in den Mittelpunkt. 

Der EZB-Rat hat beschlossen, zur Unterstützung der Bankenliquidität und der Geldmarktaktivitäten vorübergehend zusätzliche längerfristige Refinanzierungsgeschäfte (additional longer-term refinancing operations - LTRO) durchzuführen.

Technology-based financial enterprises, also known as fintechs, have the potential to transform the financial system permanently. Experts from 15 countries discussed the challenges central banks and financial supervisory authorities face in their work with the advent of fintechs.