Following these rules, the ECB has fully played its role as the central bank of Greece, continuously increasing its liquidity provision to Greek banks to ensure that they can serve the real economy. What we cannot do is fund the government, for example by refinancing Greek banks’ purchases of Tbills at a time when the Hellenic Republic does not have market access.
This is due to the fact that, for very good reasons, the EU Treaty prohibits any central bank from financing its government. This applies to Greece as to any other euro area country, and our decisions have followed exactly the same rules under this government as under the previous ones.