The beneficiary countries will have to draw up adjustment programmes which, if approved by the European Council, will be subject to periodic verification. In evaluating the exceptional circumstances that justified intervention in the government securities market, the Governing Council of the ECB considered that the functioning of the monetary policy transmission mechanism was endangered and the stability of the euro’s financial system at risk.
The ECB sterilizes these interventions, which do not finance public deficits. Its independence is not in question. These measures will have to be discontinued as quickly as possible, as soon as the markets spontaneously resume trading of the securities of the countries involved.