SPEECH  Going negative: the ECB’s experience Speech by Isabel Schnabel, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the Roundtable on Monetary Policy, Low Interest Rates and Risk Taking at the 35th Congress of the European Economic Association Frankfurt am Main, 26 August 2020 In June 2014, the ECB was the first major central bank to lower one of its key interest rates into negative territory.
[1] As experience with negative interest rates was scant, the ECB proceeded cautiously over time, lowering the deposit facility rate (DFR) in small increments of 10 basis points, until it reached -0.5% in September 2019. While negative interest rates have, over time, become a standard instrument in the ECB’s toolkit, they remain controversial, both in central banking circles and academia.