The first was a statement of its intention to achieve the 2 percent price stability target at the earliest possible time, with a time horizon of about two years.
To fulfill this objective, the main operating target for money market operations was switched from the uncollateralized overnight call rate to the monetary base; it was then decided that the size of the monetary base would rise at  4  In 2010–11, the ECB purchased a limited amount of long-term sovereign bonds under the Securities Markets Programme (SMP), but the equivalent amount of liquidity injected was sterilized.