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.

Calendars

• Consolidated calendar of Eurosystem tender operations last update: 2024 09 26
• Indicative calendar for the Eurosystem's regular tender operations
• Indicative calendar of reserve maintenance periods
• Indicative calendar for the Eurosystem's tender operations in USD
• Revised indicative calendar for TLTRO-III last update: 2021 05 05
• Revised indicative calendar for TLTRO III voluntary repayments last update: 27 October 2022

Please refer to the ad hoc communications for the latest information on schedules.

Tender procedures

Main refinancing operations

History

• History of tender operations since 1999
• History of ad hoc communications related to monetary policy implementation