That said, the upsurge in inflation recorded since 2021 has undoubtedly hit poorer households disproportionately, not least because price increases have affected items, such as energy and food, that weigh heavier on these households' shopping cart, and that cannot easily be substituted with an alternative.
The soundness of banks’ balance sheets will be a key factor in facilitating both an appropriate provision of credit to the economy and the normalisation of their funding channels. The effectiveness of the ECB’s recent non-standard measures I would now like to turn to the effectiveness of the latest Eurosystem non-standard monetary policy measures, in particular the long-term refinancing operations (LTROs).