The ECB’s options in dealing with France’s fiscal woes - ING Think

The bar for activating the ECB's bond-buying programme remains high. However, a further deterioration in France's situation could eventually force the ECB to demonstrate whether its 'whatever it takes' commitment still holds The ECB’s most powerful tools are the ones it has never used. They are the tools that the ECB developed after Mario Draghi’s ‘whatever it takes’ speech. Tools that showed ‘whatever it takes’ was something markets could believe in. The Outright Monetary Transactions programme during the euro crisis and the Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI) after the pandemic both shared the same objective: to enable potentially unlimited purchases of government bonds if needed.