ECB: Financial Stability Review 
December 2012

14 December 2012

The ECB's Financial Stability Review highlights a tangible easing of euro area financial stability strains since the summer.

The ECB’s announcement of its Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs) programme and the decisions taken by the European Council in June are fundamentally responsible for the improvement felt in the financial markets that has reduced the dispersion of yields and spreads of sovereign debt instruments.

The key financial stability risks remain and there is no room for complacency. Potential risks stem from imbalances and vulnerabilities in the fiscal, macro-economic and financial sector domains and they can be grouped into three categories:

1. Possible aggravation of the euro area sovereign debt crisis, partly because of implementation risk for agreed policy measures at the national and EU level.
2. A further deterioration in bank profitability and credit quality owing to a weak macro-financial environment.
3. Fragmented financial markets amplifying funding strains for banks in countries under stress.

Timely ECB action to address risks to euro area price stability has been critical not only in ensuring the ECB’s primary objective of keeping prices stable, but also in easing financial stress that had, at times, reached extreme levels. Most recently, the announcement of the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs) programme was crucial in underpinning a widespread narrowing of euro area sovereign spreads, accompanied by a more generalised calming of financial markets. ECB policy action cannot address the root causes of financial market fragmentation, but it has attenuated the symptoms – creating breathing space for governments and financial institutions to tackle the fundamental causes of the crisis.

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