It is worth noting that the financial crisis led other major central banks to significantly broaden the collateral framework for their open market operations. By contrast, the Eurosystem only had to make relatively minor adjustments to its collateral framework. Let me give you two examples: in October 2008, we started to accept some foreign-currency ABS against euro area collateral.
When the Currency Commission was dissolved in 1943, the Central Bank was established with an enhanced role, the most important of which was “safeguarding the integrity of the currency” and, echoing a phrase from Article 45 of the Constitution, ensuring that “in what pertains to the control of credit, the constant and predominant aim shall be the welfare of the people as a whole”.3 In the years since its establishment, both the domestic mandate of the Central Bank and our European roles have expanded.