But, also owing to the headwinds coming from the international economy, the inflation outlook continued to deteriorate in the summer and autumn of 2014 and long-term inflation expectations started to give concrete signs of destabilisation. As a result, in January 2015 the Governing Council announced the expanded asset purchase programme (APP), which included a large-scale purchase programme targeting public securities (PSPP).
The rapid integration of the euro area's money market was also supported by the developments in the payment systems infrastructure, above all the establishment of the TARGET system operated by the ESCB, which links the national real-time gross-settlement systems with the ECB's Payment Mechanism. The smooth functioning of the settlement of cross-border payments allows banks to trade safely throughout the euro area.