The experience of the first year shows that a fully functional money market developed quickly after the very successful conversion on 1 January 1999 - a market which has been much less volatile than the 11 money markets which merged into the euro market, even though the Eurosystem, consisting of the ECB and the 11 participating national central banks (NCBs), has in essence used only two operation techniques: open market operations and minimum reserve operations.
Since its inception, the single monetary policy has successfully guaranteed a stable price level, despite soaring oil prices in recent months, and at the same time it has notably contributed to non-inflationary growth in the euro area.