At the current juncture, we deem these non-standard measures an essential part of our monetary policy toolkit as they help to maintain financial stability and hence a good functioning of the monetary transmission mechanism, an essential condition for being able to deliver price stability. At the same time, I would like to stress that these measures are temporary in nature.
Indeed, they are not without drawbacks. The regime of fixed-rate full allotment discourages interbank trading because the Eurosystem in fact puts itself between banks with excess liquidity and those in need of liquidity. That is not a sustainable situation and it does not fit in the ECB’s view of a market-oriented implementation of monetary policy.