ECB Governor Council member Francois Villeroy de Galhau said today that net asset purchase will “very probably end in December” as planned. However, he emphasized that “the end of our net asset purchases will not, however, mean the end of our monetary stimulus, far from it.”
The pace of normalization would depend on incoming economic data. And three tools are at ECB’s disposal, including reinvestment of assets, interest rate and refinancing operations. Villeroy would prefer slowing the rate of reinvestment only after the first interest rate hike, which wouldn’t happen at least through the summer of 2019.
He also added that “we are not obliged to rush, as early as at our December meeting, to set out the precise length of our reinvestment period.”
