From Policy to Regime: the changing posture of the ECB between liquidity and collateral through the lens of Monetary Regime

The evolution of the European Central Bank (ECB) and of the forms of monetary policy implemented in the Eurozone since its inception outline a more radical shift in the posture of the ECB rather than the simple recourse to new instruments of monetary policy. This paper explores the concept of monetary regime to understand under a systemic lens the changes occurred in the conventional and unconventional monetary policy operations, and how they have shaped the position of the ECB within the increasingly market-based financial system. We argue that the features of a monetary regime affect the processes of de- and re-politicization of the ECB. To do so, we explore three key but under-studied changes in the operations of the ECB: the shift from a corridor to a floor system with the fixed-rate full allotment (FRFA) procedure for its refinancing operations in 2008, the implementation of Securities Lending in the second half of the 2010s, and the introduction of the Transmission Protection Mechanism in 2022. These events, in turn, hinge on the evolving dynamics between liquidity and collateral, which not only define the frame of the monetary regime, but also allow for the central bank’s operations to have significant, though involuntary and indirect, fiscal consequences. Ultimately, this paper highlights the shift from monetary and fiscal concerns to financial ones, thus arguing that macroeconomic policies have become subordinated to financial logics that imply an increasing blurring of the separations between monetary and fiscal spheres.