These include the provision of emergency liquidity and credit support to banks and other financial institutions, extending the definition of assets accepted as eligible collateral when providing financial institutions loans on a short- or medium-term basis; and introducing quantitative easing (QE) programmes in the context of which central banks have been buying from the private sector sovereign bonds, corporate bonds and other corporate assets.
Let me quickly remind you of the ECB’s monetary policy stance over the last nine years as a response to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, leading to negative interest rates and entering practically unchartered territory. 4  Table 1.