European Central Bank

The central bank of the euro area. Its Governing Council takes the rate decision, and the announcement is followed by a press conference at a published interval, which is the part of the event that usually carries more information than the decision itself. Its accounts, the equivalent of minutes elsewhere, are published weeks later, and quarterly staff projections are the closest thing it offers to a published path for rates.

The single decision is its defining problem. One policy rate applies to economies with different growth rates, different labour markets and different inflation, so the committee is always setting a rate that is too tight for some members and too loose for others. That is why its communication leans on the aggregate measures rather than on national ones, and why the spread between member states' government bond yields is watched as a gauge of the strain the arrangement is under.

Unlike its peers it publishes no committee level projection of where rates should go, so expectations are built from the statement, the conference and market prices rather than read off a document. Practitioners disagree over whether that is a weakness or a deliberate preservation of flexibility, and the argument is unresolved, which is itself a reason its press conference moves prices more than a comparable event elsewhere.