Some ammo may be left over, but for now the bazooka remains loaded and continues to fire as intended. This is the message launched on Thursday by the number of the ECB, Christine Lagardeon the future of pep, the maxi securities purchase program additional to quantitative easing e launched at the end of March to deal with the Covid-19 emergency. In short, those who expected some sign of surrender of the French to the pressure of the hawks were disappointed.
The European Central Bank may not use the allocated resources in full – until later the latest upgrade they amount to 1.350 billion euros – "only in the event of significant upward surprises" from the economy, explained Lagarde in the press conference at the end of the Governing Council, adding that, however, at the moment this is not the scenario and therefore the Eurotower will continue to "use the full coverage ”.
No news even on the times: as decided in June, the purchases will continue at least until June 2021 and in any case "until the Governing Council deems the critical phase linked to the coronavirus to be concluded", reads the note from the ECB.
Lagarde then clarified that, after the strong purchases made in the first few months, the ECB has recently "slowed down slightly", but only because market pressures have eased compared to the most acute phase of the pandemic.
For the euro area economy, concluded Lagarde, “it is expected a rebound in the second quarter, even if the uncertainty on the overall speed remains high” and the recovery is in any case uneven in the currency area.
Obviously, the directorate of the ECB has also decided to keep interest rates at an all-time low: zero on main refinancing operations, 0,25% on marginal operations and -0,50% on deposits.
Finally, the ECB reiterates its readiness to “fix” all his interventions, but also claims that the new ultra-subsidized maxi refinancing operations for banks (Filter III) "recorded very high levels of requests, supporting the disbursement of bank credit to businesses and households".
