It is also worth noting that common debt issued under the SURE programme (Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency) and even more so the Recovery Fund will make the European Union one of the largest debt issuers in Europe relative to national sovereign debt issuers over the coming years. These changes do not seem to have altered the good functioning of the euro zone sovereign market. On the contrary faced with the economic and financial shocks triggered by the corona virus pandemic, they have fared well and proved resilient. They have consequently strongly helped, with the banking system, governments and the Eurosystem to implement forceful policies that have proved effective to help the private sector to absorb those shocks. In my initial remarks today I would like to highlight some dimensions of this resilience, looking in turns to bond and the repo market but also highlight a few vulnerabilities and point of attention from a financial stability standpoint that the role and functioning of Eurozone sovereign markets during the crisis has also revealed. 1. The resilience of European sovereign markets a) Regarding the sovereign cash market, its resilience during the crisis is first illustrated by financing conditions, which have remained favorable since March 2020. In 2020, yields on euro area country sovereign bonds continued to decline, to record lows including for the euro area’s most highly indebted countries, despite the strong increase in debt issuances ; and the dispersion of yield spreads between countries also narrowed.

However, the main drivers of this third-quarter fall in inflation were energy and core goods. Annual inflation continued to decline across the core goods category thanks to decreased negative effects of exchange rate developments. Regarding underlying inflation trends, there has been a significant improvement in the core goods category. Meanwhile, the services category produced a relatively negative outlook. In the third quar ter, the core inflat ion tren d reco rded a decli ne  BIS central bankers’ speeches  5  following the favorable impact of the macroprudential measures and our tight monetary stance (Chart 11). Accordingly, the marked first-half inflation increase in core indicators was reversed in the third quarter. Yet, I would like to note that underlying trend indicators are still above the target-consistent levels. In this period, international commodity prices, especially oil, fell in line with the weak global growth outlook and USD-denominated import prices dropped. In addition to this favorable outlook of import costs, aggregate demand conditions and the relatively slow pace of growth in consumer loans alleviate the pressures on inflation. In fact, excluding food products and associated services subcategories, we see that annual consumer inflation declined considerably in the third quarter (Chart 12). In sum, the negative effects of cumulative exchange rate developments continued to wane in the third quarter, yet food prices remained on a relatively unfavorable track. The prolonged high level of consumer inflation and the ongoing deterioration in inflation expectations adversely affect pricing behaviors in certain categories, particularly services.