In the main refinancing operations since the beginning of August the ECB allotted significantly larger amounts of liquidity than under normal circumstances with an aim to limit the volatility of very short term rates around the ECB’s minimum bid rate.
These large amounts of liquidity have always been absorbed later on during the maintenance period so that the ECB has only provided banks with the liquidity needed for the fulfilment of their reserve requirements on average over the maintenance periods. Let me also underline that we only provide such operations against solid collateral, as always.