All monetary policy decisions are accompanied by a statement explaining the basis of the decision (whether the stance is change or not). Minutes of the Board’s decision-making meeting are published two weeks later. 15 The number and frequency of speeches by the Governor and Deputy Governor, as well as other senior Bank staff, have increased.
This means that the impact of negative rates on inflation and financing conditions via the exchange rate is more powerful. In short, faced with a new environment of downside risks and limited conventional policy space, the ECB showed that it had no shortage of tools available to respond.