The prolonged crisis exposed the vulnerability of a monetary union without a banking union. The Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), which started operating in November 2014, is an essential step towards restoring banks to health and rebuilding trust in the banking system. The ECB is today...

This paper provides an overview of supply and demand factors influencing the availability of euro-denominated debt instruments that qualify as high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) in the euro area. The paper estimates the supply of HQLA issued by the public and private sectors as well as the...

This occasional paper describes how the financial stability and macroprudential policy functions are organised at the ECB. Financial stability has been a key policy function of the ECB since its inception. Macroprudential policy tasks were later conferred on the ECB by the Single Supervisory...

In May 2016 the Governing Council adopted the AnaCredit Regulation (ECB/2016/13) providing the legal basis for the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) to collect granular information on loans from banks to corporates and other legal persons based on a core set of harmonised concepts and...

The ECB's monetary policy has received considerable attention in recent years. This is less the case, however, for its regular monetary policy preparation and decision-making process. This paper reviews how the factors usually considered as critical for the success of a central banking system...

Current best practice in central banking views a high level of monetary policy predictability as desirable. A clear distinction, however, has to be made between short-term and longer-term predictability. While short-term predictability can be narrowly defined as the ability of the public to...

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the use of the Eurosystem's monetary policy instruments and the operational framework from the third quarter of 2012 until the first quarter of 2016. The paper reviews the context of Eurosystem market operations, counterparty and collateral...

The Eurosystem collateral framework (ESCF) has played a key role in the ECB monetary policy implementation since 1999. Moreover, the financial and sovereign debt crisis and with it the increased reliance of banks on central bank credit have underlined the importance of central bank collateral...