ECB extends strategy review until mid-2021

The European Central Bank’s governing council has postponed the end of its of its monetary policy strategy review until mid-2021, due to the Covid-19 crisis.

“In the current situation, the decision-making bodies and staff of the ECB and the national central banks of the Eurosystem are focusing all their efforts on addressing the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic,” says the official statement.

A central point of the review will be forums where the ECB and eurozone national central banks intend to gather opinions from academia, civil society groups and the general public. Due to ongoing lockdowns across the region, the Eurosystem has been forced to postpone these gatherings.

The ECB initially planned to host these events during the first half of 2020, but now the it intends to organise them in the second half of the year. The central bank is still receiving online contributions from citizens to the review, through the ECB Listens Portal it launched in February. The process is due to remain open until August 2020.

The ECB has divided the analytical work of its monetary policy review  into 11 workstreams. Subjects examined by different workstreams include the impacts of climate change, globalisation and low productivity growth on the monetary policy framework.