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ECB’s Villeroy says he has no doubts about anti-fragmentation tool
Global Banking & Finance Review®
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PARIS (Reuters) – French ECB policymaker Francois Villeroy de Galhau said on Thursday he had no doubts the European Central Bank’s plans to keep euro zone bond spreads from unjustifiably widening would get off the ground, in the face of German reservations.
The ECB’s biggest shareholder, Germany’s Bundesbank, laid out its conditions for providing fresh support to the euro zone’s most indebted countries last week after opposing such aid at an emergency meeting in June.
“I have no doubt that we will put in place an effective instrument to protect against unjustified fragmentation,” Villeroy told French newspaper Les Echos.
“It’s not about political concern to help such or such a government. For monetary policy to be effective, it needs to be transmitted to all of the euro zone’s economic actors,” Villeroy added.
ECB policymakers pledged to buy more bonds from debt-laden countries such as Italy at an emergency meeting on June 15 to contain a widening spread between their borrowing costs and Germany’s as the central bank prepares to raise interest rates.
Villeroy said that the mere fact that the ECB would have the means under the new programme to intervene massively and quickly in the market if needed meant that it would probably not be needed.
But if it were used, then bonds purchased could be sold before maturing once the market tensions subsided and the liquidity created by the purchases could be “sterilised”, Villeroy added.
(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Toby Chopra and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
Monetary policy refers to the actions taken by a central bank to control the money supply and interest rates in an economy to achieve macroeconomic objectives such as controlling inflation, consumption, growth, and liquidity.
The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central bank for the euro and is responsible for monetary policy within the Eurozone, aiming to maintain price stability and oversee the financial system.
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