The European Central Bank's Executive Board has proposed a programme that would see the ECB buy 50 billion euros (38.50 billion pounds) in bonds per month starting in March, a euro zone source said on Wednesday.
Reuters could not confirm reports from other media about the duration of the proposed programme. The Wall Street Journal said it would last at least one year. News agency Bloomberg said the purchases would run to the end of 2016.
The ECB declined to comment on any of the reports.
The duration is significant but also contested, because Germany wants to contain the scale of bond-buying.
The six-member board, which met on Tuesday, forms the nucleus of the 25-strong policy-making Governing Council. The council meets on Thursday to decide whether to embark on QE - printing money to buy sovereign bonds.
Market expectations are sky-high for the ECB to announce a large-scale plan, despite entrenched opposition from Germany's Bundesbank and concerns in Berlin that such a programme could allow spendthrift countries to slack off on economic reforms.
A Reuters poll of money market traders on Monday showed they expected the ECB to announce a 600 billion-euro sovereign bond-buy plan, though they also believed that would not be enough to return declining inflation to the ECB's target.
Euro zone consumer prices turned negative last month, sinking to minus 0.2 percent, far below the ECB's goal of just under 2 percent.
The ECB has already cut interest rates to record lows, begun buying private-sector assets and funnelled hundreds of billions of euros in cheap loans to banks. QE is the last big policy tool it has.
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