These were carried out on 14 January 1999 in three parallel tender procedures with maturities of one, two and three months. The fixed rate tender procedure was used. By contrast with the regular main refinancing operations, the Eurosystem does not use these longer-term operations to send signals to the market and therefore usually acts as a price-taker.
Let me first highlight some historic events for those of you who have come from afar and may, thus, be less acquainted with the main features of Economic and Monetary Union. As a crown on the internal market of the European Union (EU), the euro came into existence on 1 January 1999.