Following the unconventional monetary policy tools of the last decade, ECB introduced a special monetary policy response to the COVID 19 pandemic, which occurred as a global challenge in early 2020. Aside from the measures aimed at providing ample liquidity, such as the targeted longer-term refinancing operations (TLTROs) and the pandemic emergency longer-term refinancing operations (PELTROs), collateral easing and the ongoing asset purchase programme (APP), ECB designed a special non-standard monetary policy measure, the Pandemic emergency purchase programme (PEPP). This new programme is of temporary nature and targets both private and public securities. Given the fact that some of the previous ECB’s unconventional programmes (OMT, PSPP) were challenged before the Court of Justice of the EU, one can expect the PEPP to be subject to judicial review as well. In this chapter, the author focused on the legal aspects of the PEPP. He outlined the core requirements arising from EU primary law and from the CJEU case law and considered compliance of PEPP with the EU law. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ECB’s Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme from Legal Perspective