Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

Change 9

Changed9.10. Emphasises in particular the potentially distortive impact of geopolitical uncertaintyuncertainty, energy security risks and trade disruptions on price developments;

Change 10

Removed10. Notes that a symmetric target of around 2 % is adduced as a reason to encourage inflation in times of near-zero inflation;

Added11. Invites the ECB to assess the appropriateness of its symmetric target, also taking qualitative factors into account; notes the 2025 monetary policy strategy assessment and encourages the ECB to periodically conduct such assessments;

Removed11. Invites the ECB to revise its symmetric target in favour of a more qualitative framework for protecting price stability, where price stability is defined as that state in which expected changes in the general price level do not effectively alter business or household decisions;

Added12. Stresses that the ECB’s purchase programmes are unconventional monetary policy tools that have side effects; notes in particular that asset purchase programmes can distort price signals; notes that the ECB started shrinking its balance sheet only very gradually; supports the ECB in further diminishing its direct role in purchasing securities; encourages the ECB to gradually phase out its government bond purchasing programmes; regrets the impact of the fiscal position on the ECB’s fulfilment of its primary mandate;

Removed12. Indicates that price stability, as mentioned in the mandate, could be interpreted as stability of the price level as opposed to the current interpretation of inflation stability;

Added13. Regrets that the ECB’s short-term lending schemes have largely displaced the private interbank funding market since the financial crisis of 2008; calls on the ECB to avoid paying banks deposit rates that are above market rates, as this runs counter to the principle of an open market economy with free competition, and to remove any obstacle hindering the recovery of short-term unsecured interbank markets;

Change 11

Changed19.18. Highlights, in the context of the Economic and Monetary Union and the EU economic governance framework, the importance of sound and sustainable public finances in withstanding a high interesthigh-interest rate environment;environment, in complementing the ECB’s efforts to keep inflation low, in maintaining a stable economy and in remaining resilient to future economic and financial shocks;

Change 12

Removed20. Calls on the ECB to drastically diminish its role in sovereign debt markets; regrets the inhibitive impact of the fiscal position on the ECB’s fulfilment of its primary mandate;

Added19. Takes note of diverging TARGET2 balances stemming from cross-border transactions; notes the potential risks of TARGET2 balances becoming structural and suggests that non-monetary policy adjustments should be considered;

Removed21. Expresses concern about diverging TARGET2 balances as an unintended consequence of the ample reserve regime; notes that it is not the task of the ECB to finance capital outflows or persistent trade deficits;

Added20. Underlines that the ECB should consider the potential effects of climate change from a price stability perspective and from within its mandate;

Removed22. Underlines the political nature of addressing climate change and protecting the environment;

Added21. Notes that the concept of market neutrality is related to the principle of ‘an open market economy with free competition’; invites the ECB, while respecting its independence, to address market failures and ensure the efficient allocation of resources over a long-term horizon, while remaining as apolitical as possible, respecting market neutrality in several instances; highlights that such decisions must not be made at the expense of achieving the ECB’s mandate;

Change 13

Changed24.23. Takes note of the ongoing discussions on the digital euro for both retail and wholesale purposes; stresses the importance of the role of cash;euro;

Change 14

Added24. Welcomes the ongoing short-term (Pontes) and long-term (Appia) tracks for distributed ledger technology projects for wholesale central bank money settlement;

Added25. Stresses the importance of maintaining the role of cash; takes note of the ongoing discussions on the proposal on the legal tender;

Added26. Calls on the ECB to intensify the monitoring of crypto-assets, such as stablecoins;

Change 15

Removed26. Expresses its concern at the consecutive losses made by the ECB in 2023 and 2024 due to interest rate risk;

Added28. Welcomes the Republic of Bulgaria as the 21st member of the euro area, as of 1 January 2026;

Added29. Expresses concern about the temporary outage of the ECB’s real-time gross settlement system T2 and T2S in February 2025; invites the ECB to closely monitor and ensure the proper functioning of the settlement systems;

Added30. Expresses its concern at the consecutive losses made by the ECB in 2023 and 2024 due to interest rate risk; notes that these losses have not compromised the operational capacity of the Eurosystem to implement its monetary policy;

Change 16

Removed28. Points to the need for a high degree of ambition in the work and the follow-up of the ECB High-Level Task Force on Simplification;

Added32. Supports the ECB in its efforts to improve financial literacy in the EU;

Added33. Welcomes the ECB’s commitment to simplification efforts, such as with the creation of the ECB High-Level Task Force on Simplification; points to the need for a high degree of ambition in the work and the follow-up of the task force and welcomes the ECB’s in-depth discussions with Parliament;

Added34. Calls on the ECB to foster open and constructive internal dialogue; calls for the further enhancement of staff representation frameworks and the ECB’s internal whistleblowing framework;

Added35. Reiterates that the nominations to the ECB’s Executive Board should be gender-balanced, merit and ability-based, with shortlists submitted to Parliament, and that people of all genders should have equal opportunities to serve as governors of their respective national central banks;

Added36. Invites the ESCB to continue and strengthen its dialogues with national parliaments, which it believes would strengthen the legitimacy and policies of the ESCB;