Even the volume of sovereign bond purchases currently planned under the programme will make the Eurosystem the member states’ largest creditor. For a significant share of sovereign debt, government financing costs have become decoupled from capital market conditions: for this share, governments pay interest to central banks; they then transfer these funds, which constitute part of their profit, back to their respective government coffers.
And they will become even more so once Greece joins the euro area: the stability-oriented macroeconomic framework will reduce the likelihood of policy-induced shocks (such as disturbances originating from reckless fiscal behaviour), which in the past have been an important source of country-specific shocks.