What changed in the European Central Bank statement —
European Central Bank held policy at -0.50%. The December 2019 ECB statement is a carbon copy of October 2019 in terms of key passages, with no directional shift. The committee reaffirmed its accommodative stance but took no new action, signaling a continued wait-and-see posture with no imminent change expected at the next meeting.
Decision
- Decision: hold
- Deposit facility rate: -0.50%
Going into the decision
On the day, the committee read as dovish — -1.9 on a scale where +3 means every member wants higher rates and −3 means every member wants cuts.
Reconstructed from official member remarks published before the decision date. 2 of 27 active members had stored official remarks.
What changed
The December 2019 ECB statement is a carbon copy of October 2019 in terms of key passages, with no directional shift. The committee reaffirmed its accommodative stance but took no new action, signaling a continued wait-and-see posture with no imminent change expected at the next meeting.
- Inflation — Little changed. No explicit inflation passages in either document; inflation assessment is absent, implying no change.
- Labour Market — Little changed. No explicit labour market passages in either document; no signal on labour conditions.
- Rate Path — Little changed. Forward guidance and policy action language are identical between the two meetings; rates held and the open-ended guidance with 'or lower' remains unchanged.
- Balance Sheet — Little changed. QE restart confirmation and reinvestment language are identical; no change in balance sheet stance.
Previous wording
As decided at the last Governing Council meeting in September, net purchases will be restarted under the Governing Council’s asset purchase programme (APP) at a monthly pace of €20 billion as from 1 November.
Current wording
On 1 November net purchases were restarted under the Governing Council’s asset purchase programme (APP) at a monthly pace of €20 billion.
Official statement
12 December 2019
Monetary policy decisions
At today’s meeting the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) decided that the interest rate on the main refinancing operations and the interest rates on the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility will remain unchanged at 0.00%, 0.25% and -0.50% respectively. The Governing Council expects the key ECB interest rates to remain at their present or lower levels until it has seen the inflation outlook robustly converge to a level sufficiently close to, but below, 2% within its projection horizon, and such convergence has been consistently reflected in underlying inflation dynamics.
On 1 November net purchases were restarted under the Governing Council’s asset purchase programme (APP) at a monthly pace of €20 billion. The Governing Council expects them to run for as long as necessary to reinforce the accommodative impact of its policy rates, and to end shortly before it starts raising the key ECB interest rates.
The Governing Council intends to continue reinvesting, in full, the principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the APP for an extended period of time past the date when it starts raising the key ECB interest rates, and in any case for as long as necessary to maintain favourable liquidity conditions and an ample degree of monetary accommodation.
The President of the ECB will comment on the considerations underlying these decisions at a press conference starting at 14:30 CET today.
European Central Bank
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