This framework, which was set up in the 1990s, was neither able to prevent the adverse economic developments in member states nor was it ready to resolve a crisis. When the crisis occurred, fiscal emergency measures were taken to prevent it from escalating. And the Eurosystem was forced to act as a “crisis response unit”. Understandably enough, this helped to stabilise the situation.
The flipside was that some of the measures – in particular, the sovereign bond purchases – took the Eurosystem to the outer limits of its mandate.