The monetary policy response The normalization of the ECB’s monetary policy has been underway since last December when, given the progress made in economic recovery and in the convergence of expectations towards the inflation target, the Governing Council announced the start of the reduction in net financial asset purchases.
This process was accelerated in the early months of this year: having concluded the purchases under the pandemic emergency programme at the end of March, and despite the greater downside risks to growth caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the steady increase in current and expected inflation has led us to bring forward the end of net purchases under the asset purchase programme to the beginning of July.