The decentralization of central banking operations enables the Eurosystem to use the national central banks’ infrastructure and benefit from their experience in handling monetary policy operations. The national central banks have acquired valuable experience and knowledge about their national financial markets and are thus best placed to continuously observe changes in market participants’ behavior.
The national central banks are indispensable intermediaries between the policymakers at the ECB and the Eurosystem counterparties in that they ensure that all of the many Eurosystem counterparties have equal and equitable access to central bank liquidity.