European Central Bank
The European Central Bank is the central component of the Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's most important central banks with a balance sheet total of around 7 trillion.
The ECB Governing Council makes monetary policy for the Eurozone and the European Union, administers the foreign exchange reserves of EU member states, engages in foreign exchange operations, and defines the intermediate monetary objectives and key interest rate of the EU. The ECB Executive Board enforces the policies and decisions of the Governing Council, and may direct the national central banks when doing so. The ECB has the exclusive right to authorise the issuance of euro banknotes. Member states can issue euro coins, but the volume must be approved by the ECB beforehand. The bank also operates the T2 payments system.
The ECB was established by the Treaty of Amsterdam in May 1999 with the purpose of guaranteeing and maintaining price stability. On 1 December 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon became effective and the bank gained the official status of an EU institution. When the ECB was created, it covered a Eurozone of eleven members. Since then, Greece joined in January 2001, Slovenia in January 2007, Cyprus and Malta in January 2008, Slovakia in January 2009, Estonia in January 2011, Latvia in January 2014, Lithuania in January 2015, Croatia in January 2023, and Bulgaria in 2026. The current president of the ECB is Christine Lagarde. Seated in Frankfurt, Germany, the bank formerly occupied the Eurotower prior to the construction of its new seat.
The ECB is directly governed by European Union law. Its capital stock, worth €11 billion, is owned by all 27 central banks of the EU member states as shareholders. The initial capital allocation key was determined in 1998 on the basis of the states' population and GDP, but the capital key has been readjusted since. Shares in the ECB are not transferable and cannot be used as collateral.
History
Early years (1998–2007)
The European Central Bank is the de facto successor of the European Monetary Institute. The EMI was established at the start of the second stage of the EU's Economic and Monetary Union to handle the transitional issues of states adopting the euro and prepare for the creation of the ECB and European System of Central Banks. The EMI itself took over from the earlier European Monetary Cooperation Fund.The ECB formally replaced the EMI on 1 June 1998 by virtue of the Treaty on European Union, however it did not exercise its full powers until the introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999, signalling the third stage of EMU. The bank was the final institution needed for EMU, as outlined by the EMU reports of Pierre Werner and President Jacques Delors. It was established on 1 June 1998 The first President of the Bank was Wim Duisenberg, the former president of the Dutch central bank and the European Monetary Institute. While Duisenberg had been the head of the EMI just before the ECB came into existence, the French government wanted Jean-Claude Trichet, former head of the French central bank, to be the ECB's first president. The French argued that since the ECB was to be located in Germany, its president should be French. This was opposed by the German, Dutch and Belgian governments who saw Duisenberg as a guarantor of a strong euro. Tensions were abated by a gentleman's agreement in which Duisenberg would stand down before the end of his mandate, to be replaced by Trichet.
Trichet replaced Duisenberg as president in November 2003. Until 2007, the ECB had very successfully managed to maintain inflation close but below 2%.
Response to the financial crises (2008–2014)
The European Central Bank underwent through a deep internal transformation as it faced the 2008 financial crisis and the Euro area crisis.Early response to the Euro area crisis
The Euro area crisis began after Greece's new elected government uncovered the real level of indebtedness and budget deficit and warned EU institutions of the imminent danger of a Greek sovereign default.Foreseeing a possible sovereign default in the eurozone, the general public, international and European institutions, and the financial community reassessed the economic situation and creditworthiness of some Eurozone member states. Consequently, sovereign bonds yields of several Eurozone countries started to rise sharply. This provoked a self-fulfilling panic on financial markets: the more Greek bonds yields rose, the more likely a default became possible, the more bond yields increased in turn.
This panic was also aggravated because of the reluctance of the ECB to react and intervene on sovereign bond markets for two reasons. First, because the ECB's legal framework normally forbids the purchase of sovereign bonds in the primary market, An over-interpretation of this limitation, inhibited the ECB from implementing quantitative easing like the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England did as soon as 2008, which played an important role in stabilizing markets.
Secondly, a decision by the ECB made in 2005 introduced a minimum credit rating for all Eurozone sovereign bonds to be eligible as collateral to the ECB's open market operations. This meant that if a private rating agencies were to downgrade a sovereign bond below that threshold, many banks would suddenly become illiquid because they would lose access to ECB refinancing operations. According to former member of the governing council of the ECB Athanasios Orphanides, this change in the ECB's collateral framework "planted the seed" of the euro crisis.
Faced with those regulatory constraints, the ECB led by Jean-Claude Trichet in 2010 was reluctant to intervene to calm down financial markets. Up until 6 May 2010, Trichet formally denied at several press conferences the possibility of the ECB to embark into sovereign bonds purchases, even though Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy faced waves of credit rating downgrades and increasing interest rate spreads.
Market interventions (2010–2011)
In a remarkable u-turn, the ECB announced on 10 May 2010, the launch of a "Securities Market Programme" which involved the discretionary purchase of sovereign bonds in secondary markets. Extraordinarily, the decision was taken by the Governing Council during a teleconference call only three days after the ECB's usual meeting of 6 May. The ECB justified this decision by the necessity to "address severe tensions in financial markets." The decision also coincided with the EU leaders decision of 10 May to establish the European Financial Stabilisation mechanism, which would serve as a crisis fighting fund to safeguard the euro area from a future sovereign debt crisis.Although at first limited to the debt of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the bulk of the ECB's bond buying eventually consisted of Spanish and Italian debt. These purchases were intended to dampen international speculation against stressed countries, and thus avoid a contagion of the Greek crisis towards other Eurozone countries. The assumption—largely justified—was that speculative activity would decrease over time and the value of the assets increase.
Although SMP purchases did inject liquidity into financial markets, all of these injections were "sterilized" through weekly liquidity absorption. So the operation was net neutral in liquidity terms.
In September 2011, ECB's Board member Jürgen Stark, resigned in protest against the "Securities Market Programme" which involved the purchase of sovereign bonds from Southern member states, a move that he considered as equivalent to monetary financing, which is prohibited by the EU Treaty. The Financial Times Deutschland referred to this episode as "the end of the ECB as we know it", referring to its hitherto perceived "hawkish" stance on inflation and its historical Deutsche Bundesbank influence.
As of 18 June 2012, the ECB in total had spent €212.1bn for bond purchases covering outright debt, as part of the Securities Markets Programme. Controversially, the ECB made substantial profits out of SMP, which were largely redistributed to Eurozone countries. In 2013, the Eurogroup decided to refund those profits to Greece, however, the payments were suspended from 2014 until 2017 over the conflict between Yanis Varoufakis and ministers of the Eurogroup. In 2018, profits refunds were reinstalled by the Eurogroup. However, several NGOs complained that a substantial part of the ECB profits would never be refunded to Greece.
Role in the Troika (2010–2015)
The ECB played a controversial role in the "Troika" by rejecting most forms of debt restructuring of public and bank debts, and pressing governments to adopt bailout programmes and structural reforms through secret letters to Italian, Spanish, Greek and Irish governments. It has further been accused of interfering in the Greek referendum of July 2015 by constraining liquidity to Greek commercial banks.In November 2010, reflecting the huge increase in borrowing, including the cover the cost of having guaranteed the liabilities of banks, the cost of borrowing in the private financial markets had become prohibitive for the Irish government. Although it had deferred the cash cost of recapitalising the failing Anglo Irish Bank by nationalising it and issuing it with a "promissory note", the Government also faced a large deficit on its non-banking activities, and it therefore turned to the official sector for a loan to bridge the shortfall until its finances were credibly back on a sustainable footing. Meanwhile, Anglo used the promissory note as collateral for its emergency loan from the Central Bank. This enabled Anglo to repay its depositors and bondholders.
It became clear later that the ECB played a key role in making sure the Irish government did not let Anglo default on its debts, to avoid financial instability risks. On 15 October and 6 November 2010, the ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet sent two secret letters to the Irish finance Minister which essentially informed the Irish government of the possible suspension of ELA's credit lines, unless the government requested a financial assistance programme to the Eurogroup under the condition of further reforms and fiscal consolidation.
In addition, the ECB insisted that no debt restructuring should be applied to the nationalized banks' bondholders, a measure which could have saved Ireland 8 billion euros.
During 2012, the ECB pressed for an early end to the ELA, and this situation was resolved with the liquidation of the successor institution IBRC in February 2013. The promissory note was exchanged for much longer term marketable floating rate notes which were disposed of by the Central Bank over the following decade.
In April 2011, the ECB raised interest rates for the first time since 2008 from 1% to 1.25%, with a further increase to 1.50% in July 2011. However, in 2012–2013 the ECB sharply lowered interest rates to encourage economic growth, reaching the historically low 0.25% in November 2013. Soon after the rates were cut to 0.15%, then on 4 September 2014 the central bank reduced the rates by two-thirds from 0.15% to 0.05%. Recently, the interest rates were further reduced reaching 0.00%, the lowest rates on record.
In a report adopted on 13 March 2014, the European Parliament criticized the "potential conflict of interest between the current role of the ECB in the Troika as 'technical advisor' and its position as a creditor of the four Member States, as well as its mandate under the Treaty". The report was led by Austrian right-wing MEP Othmar Karas and French Socialist MEP Liem Hoang Ngoc.