In these circumstances, unchanged monetary policy parameters would in fact imply an unwarranted increase in monetary stimulus, and when one looks at the 10-year German government bond yield since the summer one might conclude that, despite fewer purchases, we had eased our monetary policy, a step which does not correspond to our plan.
A further reason why the Governing Council elected to scale back our monthly purchases is that, as the size of our portfolio increases, the marginal impact of a given level of purchases increases. Owing to our already large bond holdings, the free float of securities is now substantially lower than when we began our programme in 2015.