Let me report on the outcome of our meeting, which was also attended by Commissioner Almunia. On the basis of our regular economic and monetary analyses, we decided at today’s meeting to leave the key ECB interest rates unchanged. The information that has become available since our previous meeting has further underpinned the reasoning behind our decision to increase interest rates in June.
For example, a customer gives the commercial bank instructions, the message is sent to the central bank of the originating country. The message is then sent through SWIFT to the central bank of the country where the payment is destined, at which point it is transformed and settled in the respective commercial bank account through a cross border module.