Another significant step is the signing of the Fiscal Compact, a treaty in which the political leaders of the euro area countries (and most other EU countries) further strengthened the rules governing budgetary discipline in Europe.
The ECB also took unconventional measures to prevent the sovereign debt crisis from severely dragging down the real economy and from frustrating monetary transmission and its efforts to maintain price stability. We first introduced the Securities Markets Programme, or SMP, for interventions in the secondary government bond markets of vulnerable countries in order to restore their proper functioning.