European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said she remained cautiously optimistic about EU’s potential to return to growth in the second quarter of 2021. Lagarde said that Europe possesses all needed tools to secure economic rebound.

Bulgaria and Croatia must make significant progress in terms of quality of institutions and governance. This was noted in a European Central Bank (ECB) piece on the two countries that last year joined the exchange rate mechanism ERM II, also known as “the Eurozone's waiting room”.

The European Central Bank expressed its intention to protect and boost EU economy. ECB noted that it is committed to enforce further and stronger stimulus packages, aimed at supporting the single currency and the European economies, bank’s board member Fabio Panetta told Reuters.

The European Central Bank decided to disburse another 500m euro to offset negative impact on European economies caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. The decision comes just ahead of Christmas shopping madness and amid rising number of people infected with the virus across Europe. ECB on Thursday decided to raise its ongoing bond purchase stimulus by 500bn euro, to 185tn from 1.35tn, and to extend the support programme until at least March 2022 instead of the current earliest end date of mid 2021, AP reported.

Frank Elderson from the Netherlands is to become a member of European Central Bank Executive Board after his candidacy was last Tuesday approved by European Parliament, the EP press service reported. The plenary voted by 319 votes in favour, 202 against and 171 abstentions, despite misgivings about gender imbalance within the board.

The European Central Bank (ECB) said in a report on Wednesday that abruptly ending support measures brought in due to the COVID-19 pandemic could lead to cliff-edge effects on household and corporate income, with knock-on effects for economic activity in 2021, adding that Italy and the Netherlands were the EU countries most exposed to these risks.

The European Central Bank will held talks on possible tweaks to its inflation target at a seminar next week, Finnish central bank governor Olli Rehn said on Friday, reinforcing expectations that the target could be finalised before a strategy review ends in mid-2021.

The dollar paused its climb on Friday, while the euro wallowed near its four-week low against the greenback after the European Central Bank signalled more stimulus may come in December as COVID-19 rips into the economy, news wires reported.

Do you remember anything about credit ratings? We mean the funny looking numbers and letters that used to make credit cheaper or expensive. Well, we should all forget about that era of financial discipline. With the coronavirus death toll surging to record highs, countries around the globe spurred spending, boosting debt numbers to record levels. No one really cares about ratings anymore.

Eurozone governments must keep spending heavily to aid the recovery from pandemic-induced recession, complementing already super-easy monetary policy, ECB President Christine Lagarde said on Sunday. “Confidence in the private sector rests to a very large extent on confidence in fiscal policies,” she said in a speech.