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This study examines the discursive reactions of the European Central Bank (ECB) to populism. Focusing on the period from 2012 to 2019, the research uses a corpus of 20 speeches delivered by ECB representatives. Through a textual and contextual analysis, the aim is to uncover patterns and themes within the ECB’s discourse on populism. The findings reveal a cohesive and unified discourse, suggesting a consistent messaging strategy employed by the ECB. The discourse strand is shown to be predominantly anti-populist, portraying populism as a referential object and associating it with economic uncertainty. The two possible explanations for the ECB’s anti-populist discourse are proposed: as part of the ECB’s discursive strategy to legitimise its actions and reinforce credibility, or as a sign of the potential politicisation of the bank.

The building of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt am Main is the result of a complex process that intersects and amplifies a set of issues concerning the relation between architecture and power at the turn of the millennium. From the initial competition, launched in 2002, to the inauguration of the tower designed by Coop Himmelb(l)au, this case highlights the reluctance, on the part of the institution, to use architecture to project power and showcase its mission. This hesitancy relates to the ECB's particular status as a supranational institution, operating between multiple national identities. While assuming an increasingly political role, the bank tried to present itself as a neutral, technical body, responding to a model of depoliticized governance. All that matters is what the institution does, not what it is. On a parallel level, this functionalist outlook aligned with a contemporaneous shift in architectural practice and thought. The traditional concern with representation was challenged by an evolving notion of materialism, which set aside questions of meaning in favor of questions of performance. All that matters is what buildings do. From this perspective, the performance of the technical infrastructure is believed to be the primary source of meaning, for both the institution and the architecture that housed it. The unfolding of the ECB project, however, revealed the limitations of such approaches. Given the importance of the bank within the governance of the European Union during a time of economic crisis, the building site became the stage for multiple symbolic rituals and forced a difficult reflection on the image of the European community. Despite the efforts to blend in and neutralize architecture, as in the case of the euro banknotes, the building process pushed the ECB to start addressing its unique political dimension, beyond reductive notions of technical efficiency.

Monetary financing – the issuance of public money to support public expenditure – remains a widespread policy taboo. In this article, we analyze the operational practices of the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank (ECB) from the 20th onwards to argue that monetary finance should be understood as a conventional and legitimate part of central banks' core functions. We argue that monetary financing serves a crucial macro-financial role in the face of large fluctuations in the demand for and supply of government debt, where the central bank acts to stabilize sovereign debt markets. We show that monetary financing has been a stable and pervasive feature of the Bank of England's and the Federal Reserve's operations. Turning to the ECB, we show that by the mid-2000s the view came to dominate the institution that the central bank should allow markets to punish governments for excessive deficits. This view informed the ECB's catastrophic reluctance to act on the 2008 and 2009 Financial Crisis deficits. By 2020 that attitude had once again largely been abandoned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Central Bank (ECB) has entered the preparation phase for the potential issuance of a digital euro. The digital euro under consideration represents a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), a digital representation of central bank money that is intended for use by the general public. This article foregrounds the digital euro as an infrastructure that furthers European security ambitions. It argues that the development of the digital euro is a materialization of European (in)security rationales that aim to secure pan-European financial transactions amid growing geopolitical tensions. It focuses on the development of the technology and analyses how central bankers' scenarios of the future manifest in the anticipated design and prototypes. While the provision of a financial infrastructure is the most decisive security-related implication of the digital euro, the introduction of a new form of public money is the decisive financial feature with potentially wide-ranging implications for banks. Although the ECB seeks to balance the interests of banks and other financial actors in the development of the digital euro, its plans are still met with criticism. Finally, the article argues that the ECB exerts itself more explicitly than before as a geopolitical actor in its own regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying monetary authority response to macroeconomic imbalances using the interest rate as a proxy variable for monetary policy became ineffective after the financial crisis, when central banks exhausted the effective capacity of interest rates by reaching the zero lower bound (ZLB). In an effort to analyse the unconventional response deployed by central banks, we present and estimate a modified reaction function that uses money supply as the operational instrument of monetary policy for the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, and we verify its utility as an explanatory instrument for the behaviour of the two monetary authorities. By applying our strategy, it is feasible to identify both monetary policy reaction with regard to the economic situation as well as other possible monetary authority concerns regarding governments' fiscal behaviour and the evolution of asset markets, regardless of the monetary policy applied at any given time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]