The Governing Council is determined to carry out the programme in full in order to bring inflation back into line with the medium-term objective. Any undesirable tightening of monetary conditions will be forcefully countered. Credit conditions and credit quality The monetary expansion is gradually being transmitted to credit conditions.
In Italy the interest rates on new business loans and home mortgage loans were down to 2.2 and 2.7 per cent in May, from 3.1 and 3.3 per cent in mid-2014. For firms, the spread with respect to the corresponding German and French rates has narrowed by about half a percentage point.