The European Central Bank's Governing Council approved the 2025 monitoring report on compliance with the European Union's prohibitions against monetary financing and privileged access on March 18, 2026. The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) tasks the ECB with monitoring EU central banks' compliance with the prohibitions in Articles 123 and 124 and related regulations. Further information on this matter will be available in a dedicated section of the ECB’s Annual Report 2025, which will be published on the ECB’s website on May 4, 2026.
TREATY OBLIGATIONS REINFORCED
Article 123 prohibits the ECB and the national central banks from providing overdraft or other credit facilities to governments and EU institutions or bodies, and from buying their debt instruments in the primary market. Article 124 prohibits any measure, not based on prudential considerations, that gives governments and EU institutions or bodies privileged access to financial institutions. The monitoring covers all EU national central banks, not only those in the euro area, and the ECB also monitors their secondary-market purchases of public sector debt instruments.
"In accordance with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) which tasks the ECB with monitoring the compliance of EU central banks with the prohibitions referred to in Articles 123 and 124 of the TFEU and the related regulations, the Governing Council approved the monitoring report covering 2025," the ECB stated in its official decision release.
The same ECB release listed other recent Governing Council decisions. On March 3, 2026, the Council approved the ECB Annual Report on supervisory activities 2025, published March 18 and transmitted to the European Parliament, the EU Council, the Eurogroup, the European Commission and national parliaments. On March 5, 2026, it adopted Decision ECB/2026/7 setting annual supervisory fees for 2025.
MONETARY POLICY CONTEXT
At its monetary policy meeting on March 19, 2026, the Governing Council kept the three key ECB interest rates unchanged.
The ECB said the war in the Middle East had made the outlook "significantly more uncertain, creating upside risks for inflation and downside risks for economic growth". The March staff projections assumed oil and gas prices in 2026 almost 30% and 57% higher, respectively, than in the December 2025 projections. The March 2026 ECB staff projections document headline inflation now forecast at 2.6% in 2026, 2.0% in 2027, and 2.1% in 2028.
RATE EXPECTATIONS
Barclays and J.P. Morgan said they expected the ECB to raise rates at its April policy meeting.
PREVIOUS FINDINGS
The ECB's monitoring exercise for 2024 confirmed that Articles 123 and 124 had in general been respected, according to its Annual Report 2024.
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