This exceptional narrow corridor, of 50 basis points, between the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility aims at smoothing the adaptation of market participants to the integrated euro area money market during the initial days of Monetary Union.
The maintenance of such a narrow corridor is not desirable beyond the short term, since it would hamper the development of an efficient euro area money market. Therefore, the Governing Council intends to terminate this measure following its meeting on 21 January 1999. In summary, let me provide the following explanations for these decisions.