In order to deliver our mandate, the ECB has done a great deal to support the euro area economy. First, we have reduced our main interest rate to the historic low of 0.5%. Second, we have introduced a series of measures to ensure that banks can pass on these low interest rates to borrowers in the real economy.
These measures include allowing banks to borrow as much liquidity from the ECB as they need; expanding the range of collateral they can use to access that liquidity; intervening in bond markets that were malfunctioning, like the sovereign bond market or the covered bond market; and launching two three-year Long-Term Refinancing Operations (LTROs), which injected more than 1 trillion euro into the euro area banking system.