Moreover competition owing to price transparency has been driven considerably by advances in information and communication technology such as electronic banking. The narrowing of interest margins and substitution effects on the liability side of 39 40 41 42  43 44 45  46 47 48  49  See ECB (1999a), p 21.
In the first phase – the phase of fragmentation – the flexibility of our pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP)[10] averted an unjustified widening of spreads which would have disrupted monetary policy transmission. As a result, speculators stopped using short positions on particular euro area sovereigns as a way of expressing their negative views on the global economy.