Christine Lagarde

The European Central Bank pushed back on Thursday at a German court's attempt to curb its power to buy government bonds, saying it was "more determined than ever" to pull the eurozone out of its worst economic crisis in nearly a century.

The European Central Bank tweaked policy around the edges on Thursday but kept the door wide open to further stimulus — including potentially controversial purchases of junk debt — to help an economy ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

The European Central Bank (ECB) and the National Bank of Bulgaria (BNB, the central bank) have set up a swap line to ensure liquidity of up to two billion euros, the BNB said on Wednesday. The line will be in force until the end of 2020 or until needed. The maximum maturity in respect of each withdrawn amount will be three months, BTA reported.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde drew the line on how far the ECB could go in helping virus-stricken eurozone countries on Wednesday, saying lending to governments directly would be illegal and handing out cash to citizens difficult.

Europe should not get hung up on the idea of issuing coronabonds through a specially created European rescue fund, ECB President Christine Lagarde said in a newspaper interview published on Thursday.
"I don't think that we should get fixated on 'coronabonds'. In Europe, things take a bit more time than we would like, but we always find a solution," she told French daily Le Parisien.

The decision of the European Central Bank to make an exception to the rule and offer Greece a waiver that will allow Greek paper though still not investment grade to be used as collateral for Greek banks to have access to ECB cash is an important step forward for the embattled Greek economy.

Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras on Wednesday spoke openly on Bloomberg in favor of a so-called "corona bond," warning that unless joint fiscal action is taken Europe will face a new debt crisis.

European Union leaders said on Thursday night that they will do whatever is necessary to protect citizens from the Covid-19 pandemic but failed to agree on specific measures.

Greece's benchmark 10-year bond yield tumbled by about 50 percent on Thursday, returning to the 2 percent level from 4.1 percentage points previously, after the key move by the European Central Bank to incorporate Greece in its emergency bond-buying program.

Greece's inclusion in an emergency assets purchases' program launched by the European Central Bank (ECB) to tackle the economic effects of the new coronavirus "is not a coincidence" and is credited to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' intervention, government sources said Thursday morning, after the ECB announced the news.