The ECB is a cornerstone of Europe’s stability

“The European Central Bank (ECB) is one of the cornerstones of the Eurozone's - and Europe’s - financial stability. The EPP Group, as it did in the past, will keep on supporting the activities of the ECB in the implementation of decisive monetary and inflation policy as well as its efforts to stabilise the banking sector,” said MEPs Jean-Paul Gauzes, EPP Group spokesperson on monetary affairs, and Ildikó Gáll-Pelcz, Shadow Rapporteur on the ECB annual report, following the adoption of the document.

“The EPP Group welcomes the positive effects of the reduction of the ECB key interest rates in the course of the year 2012, as well as the medium and long-term refinancing operations, including the three-year LTRO and OMT operations, which have helped to stabilise the banking system and to provide more credit to the real economy. Nevertheless, we must emphasize that these non-conventional measures that the ECB has used since the beginning of the crisis should be regarded as mainly temporary, and the central bank should explore further tools to be able to provide specific programmes to better help SMEs to access credit throughout Europe,” said Ildikó Gáll-Pelcz, from Hungary.

“We also welcome the progress achieved on the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), which would confer power on the ECB to supervise Eurozone credit institutions. This would definitely contribute to severing the link between banks and sovereigns and would help to develop a real European crisis management strategy,” underlined the Shadow Rapporteur.

"The European Central Bank is playing a crucial role in the economic recovery of the Eurozone. Our goal must be to deepen the banking union and to accelerate the implementation of structural reforms to enable Europe to make progress on its competitiveness, growth and job creation," added Jean-Paul Gauzès.

“With this well-balanced and fair report we can confidently demonstrate to European citizens that the ECB has done everything possible to stabilise the banking sector in 2012,” said both MEPs.