Certainly, the euro area needs an active and freely functioning government bond market, and lack of market discipline was one of the failures that have led to the crisis. But when applying it to the case at hand, one should not ignore the most important feature of OMTs, namely: its explicit link to policy conditionality.
This feature distinguishes OMTs from other historical episodes of central bank intervention in government bond markets. And it renders the argument on incentive incompatibility invalid. This is because conditionality removes the privilege for governments to choose between economic adjustment and central bank intervention. 5  This line of reasoning has also received empirical support.