page_title: European Central Bank
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: European Central Bank / History
caption_attribution_description: DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 25JAN13 - Mario Draghi, President, European Central Bank, Frankfurt is captured during the special address session at the Annual Meeting 2013 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2013. . . Copyright by World Economic Forum. . swiss-image.ch/Photo Remy Steinegger
context_page_description: The European Central Bank is the central bank of the Eurozone, a monetary union of 19 EU member states which employ the euro. Established by the Treaty of Amsterdam, the ECB is one of the world's most important central banks and serves as one of seven institutions of the European Union, being enshrined in the Treaty on European Union. The bank's capital stock is owned by all 27 central banks of each EU member state. The current President of the ECB is Christine Lagarde. Headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, the bank formerly occupied the Eurotower prior to the construction of its new seat.
  The primary objective of the ECB, mandated in Article 2 of the Statute of the ECB, is to maintain price stability within the Eurozone. Its basic tasks, set out in Article 3 of the Statute, are to set and implement the monetary policy for the Eurozone, to conduct foreign exchange operations, to take care of the foreign reserves of the European System of Central Banks and operation of the financial market infrastructure under the TARGET2 payments system and the technical platform for settlement of securities in Europe.
context_section_description: The European Central Bank is the de facto successor of the European Monetary Institute (EMI). The EMI was established at the start of the second stage of the EU's Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) to handle the transitional issues of states adopting the euro and prepare for the creation of the ECB and European System of Central Banks (ESCB).  The EMI itself took over from the earlier European Monetary Co-operation Fund (EMCF).
  The ECB formally replaced the EMI on 1 June 1998 by virtue of the Treaty on European Union (TEU, Treaty of Maastricht), however it did not exercise its full powers until the introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999, signalling the third stage of EMU. The bank was the final institution needed for EMU, as outlined by the EMU reports of Pierre Werner and President Jacques Delors. It was established on 1 June 1998.
  The first President of the Bank was Wim Duisenberg, the former president of the Dutch central bank and the European Monetary Institute. While Duisenberg had been the head of the EMI (taking over from Alexandre Lamfalussy of Belgium) just before the ECB came into existence, the French government wanted Jean-Claude Trichet, former head of the French central bank, to be the ECB's first president. The French argued that since the ECB was to be located in Germany, its president should be French. This was opposed by the German, Dutch and Belgian governments who saw Duisenberg as a guarantor of a strong euro. Tensions were abated by a gentleman's agreement in which Duisenberg would stand down before the end of his mandate, to be replaced by Trichet.
  Trichet replaced Duisenberg as President in November 2003.
  There had also been tension over the ECB's Executive Board, with the former member  state United Kingdom demanding a seat even though it had not joined the Single Currency. Under pressure from France, three seats were assigned to the largest members, France, Germany, and Italy; Spain also demanded and obtained a seat. Despite such a system of appointment the board asserted its independence early on in resisting calls for interest rates and future candidates to it.
  When the ECB was created, it covered a Eurozone of eleven members. Since then, Greece joined in January 2001, Slovenia in January 2007, Cyprus and Malta in January 2008, Slovakia in January 2009, Estonia in January 2011, Latvia in January 2014 and Lithuania in January 2015, enlarging the bank's scope and the membership of its Governing Council.
  On 1 December 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force, ECB according to the article 13 of TEU, gained official status of an EU institution.
  In September 2011, when German appointee to the Governing Council and Executive board, Jürgen Stark, resigned in protest of the ECB's "Securities Market Programme" which involved the purchase of sovereign bonds by the ECB, a move that was up until then considered as prohibited by the EU Treaty. The Financial Times Deutschland referred to this episode as "the end of the ECB as we know it", referring to its hitherto perceived "hawkish" stance on inflation and its historical Deutsche Bundesbank influence.
  On 1 November 2011, Mario Draghi replaced Jean-Claude Trichet as President of the ECB.
  In April 2011, the ECB raised interest rates for the first time since 2008 from 1% to 1.25%, with a further increase to 1.50% in July 2011. However, in 2012–2013 the ECB sharply lowered interest rates to encourage economic growth, reaching the historically low 0.25% in November 2013. Soon after the rates were cut to 0.15%, then on 4 September 2014 the central bank reduced the rates by two thirds from 0.15% to 0.05%. Recently, the interest rates were further reduced reaching 0.00%, the lowest rates on record.
  In November 2014, the bank moved into its new premises.
  On 1 November 2019, Christine Lagarde, former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, replaced Mario Draghi as President.
caption: Mario Draghi, President of the ECB between 2011-2019
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