To date, no such purchases have been made, nor have the related acts been formally adopted, pending a ruling by the European Court of Justice on the German Constitutional Court’s referral. But their announcement alone was enough to calm the markets. The effectiveness of these measures must not be underestimated.
They lessened the tensions in the money and capital markets and averted a sharper contraction in credit, thereby braking the deterioration of the monetary policy transmission mechanism. According  19  Martina Cecioni and Giuseppe Ferrero (2012), “Determinants of TARGET2 imbalances”, Banca d’Italia, Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers), No. 136.