Over the past 18 months we have been witnessing two important developments in Europe as a result of the crisis, involving both monetary policy and fiscal policy.
The first one is the purchase of government bonds by the Eurosystem (the ECB and the national central banks) – the Securities Markets Programme (SMP) – and the second one is the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), which will become the European Stabilisation Mechanism (ESM) after the Treaty has been amended.