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Open market operations

We use open market operations to steer interest rates, to manage the amount of liquidity in the financial system and to signal our monetary policy stance. Our regular open market operations consist of one-week liquidity-providing operations in euro (main refinancing operations, or MROs) and three-month liquidity-providing operations in euro (longer-term refinancing operations, or LTROs).

Non-regular open market operations

In recent years, the regular operations have been complemented by longer-term refinancing operations in euro with maturities of up to four years, as well as by US dollar liquidity-providing operations.

PELTROs – pandemic emergency longer-term refinancing operations – On 30 April 2020 the ECB’s Governing Council decided to conduct a series of seven PELTROs to provide liquidity support to the euro area financial system and ensure smooth money market conditions during the pandemic. On 10 December 2020 the Governing Council decided to offer a series of four additional PELTROs in 2021 to serve as a liquidity backstop to preserve the smooth functioning of the money market.

TLTROs - targeted longer-term refinancing operations - These are operations that provide financing to credit institutions for periods of up to four years. They offer long-term funding at attractive conditions to credit institutions in order to further ease private sector credit conditions and stimulate bank lending to the real economy.

APP - asset purchase programme - While outright asset purchases have been implemented since 2009 under several programmes, the APP was launched in October 2014 with the aim of fulfilling the ECB’s price stability mandate. Net asset purchases under the APP ended as of July 2022. Reinvestments of principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the APP were discontinued as of July 2023.

PEPP - pandemic emergency purchase programme - On 18 March 2020 the Governing Council announced the PEPP with an initial envelope of €750 billion. The Governing Council decided to increase this envelope by €600 billion on 4 June 2020 and by €500 billion on 10 December 2020, to a new total of €1,850 billion. The programme was designed as a response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) emergency to address the unprecedented situation faced by our monetary union.

On 16 December 2021 the Governing Council decided to discontinue net asset purchases under the PEPP at the end of March 2022 and to reinvest the principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the PEPP until at least the end of 2024.

On 14 December 2023 the Governing Council announced that it intends to continue to reinvest, in full, the principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the PEPP during the first half of 2024 and to reduce the PEPP portfolio by €7.5 billion per month on average over the second half of the year. At the same time, the Governing Council announced that it intends to discontinue reinvestments under the PEPP at the end of 2024.

"Ad hoc" communications related to monetary policy implementation
Euro operations
Ref. Type Operation subcategory Settlement date Maturity date Days Allotted amount Outstanding amount
20240027MRO20/03/202427/03/20247
20240022MRO13/03/202420/03/202472.38 bn2.38 bn
20240018LTRO28/02/202429/05/2024913.46 bn3.46 bn
20240009LTRO31/01/202402/05/2024921.26 bn1.26 bn
20230174LTRO21/12/202327/03/2024971.06 bn1.06 bn
20210155LTROTLTRO III22/12/202118/12/2024109251.97 bn38.8 bn
20210119LTROTLTRO III29/09/202125/09/2024109297.57 bn84.82 bn
20210078LTROTLTRO III24/06/202126/06/20241098109.83 bn53.17 bn
20210034LTROTLTRO III24/03/202127/03/20241099330.5 bn215.47 bn
1) MRO = Main Refinancing Operations, LTRO = Long Term Refinancing Operations, OT = other type of operation
Non-euro operations
Ref. Curr. Operation subcategory Settlement date Maturity date Days Allotted amount
20240026USDUSD 7-days14/03/202421/03/202470.17 bn
Euro outright operations - Reference date: 2024-03-08
Instrument Outstanding amount1 (EUR millions)
Securities markets programme 2,397
Covered bonds purchase programme 3 276,977
Asset-backed securities purchase programme 12,546
Public sector purchase programme 2,350,990
Corporate sector purchase programme 318,226
Pandemic emergency purchase programme 1,668,986
1 At amortised cost
See Asset purchases programmes for more information

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