However, even if we look at the much longer historical experience of the national central banks forming the Eurosystem, such as the Deutsche Bundesbank, it is not possible to find anything similar.
The severity of the economic contraction, with the ensuing downside risks for price stability, prompted the ECB to introduce additional measures that allowed it to ease monetary conditions above and beyond what could be achieved through the interest rate instrument alone. Thus, the ECB adopted the comprehensive set of non-standard liquidity measures that together form what we call our “enhanced credit support” approach.