Monetary policy decisions

At today's meeting the Governing Council of the ECB decided that the interest rates on the main refinancing operations, the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility will remain unchanged at 2.5%, 3.5% and 1.5% respectively.

In addition, the Governing Council decided to change the maturity of the longer-term refinancing scheduled to be settled on 30 September 1999. The redemption date of this operation will be brought forward from 30 December to 23 December 1999. Related to this, the longer-term refinancing operation, originally scheduled to be announced on 27 December 1999 and to be allotted and settled on 30 December 1999, will instead be announced on 21 December, allotted on 22 December and settled on 23 December 1999. This rescheduling of operations is intended to alleviate the working procedures for the financial market participants at the turn of the year.