Increasing real interest rates thus indicated that further monetary easing was necessary despite the policy rates being close to the zero lower bound. [Slide 7: Eurosystem’s accommodative monetary policy] In the June 2014 monetary policy meeting, the Governing Council eased the stance of monetary policy.
As a part of the package, we cut the deposit rate to negative, extended the guarantee of banks’ access to unlimited central bank finance (given that they provide sufficient  BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  collateral) by extending fixed rate full allotment policy, and we set up a series of additional long-term refinancing operations that provide the banks with finance on the condition that they increase the value of their loans to the real economy.