Unlocking the ECB’s green potential

The ECB has committed to designing its new structural monetary policy operations in support of the green transition. But there's a catch: under its current framework, these operations won't arrive before 2028 – and will reach only around €200 billion by 2029. Too little, too late to close Europe's green investment gap or meaningfully reduce its fossil fuel dependence.

In this e-paper, Jordi Schröder Bosch argues that an alternative operational framework (one in which structural operations play a central role in liquidity provision) would allow the ECB to act earlier and at far greater scale. The study also proposes three concrete designs for a green structural long-term refinancing programme, weighing their feasibility against the data constraints introduced by the EU's Omnibus legislative package.

The report also warns that the EU’s new Omnibus legislative package – which weakens corporate sustainability reporting – could reduce the availability of high-quality green data. This would make it harder for the ECB to run the most ambitious version of a green refinancing programme.

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