The European Central Bank (ECB) bought all of the new loans issued by Italy in April and May, but this exceptional effort barely helped stabilize Rome's financing costs, show data published by the institution on Tuesday. . The ECB has acquired € 51.1 billion in Italian government bonds in the past two months, compared to a net security offering of $ 49 billion according to calculations by analysts at UniCredit.
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The yield on Italian ten-year securities fell only four basis points over the period, falling to 1.491% on Friday. The ECB's statistics also show that the ECB has put its internal rules in brackets in the face of the emergency created by the coronavirus pandemic, by buying many more Italian bonds than the distribution rule based on the population and economic weight of each country.
This gap could be criticized by Germany, whose share in purchases was below its quota, while the decision of the German Constitutional Court on the quantitative easing programs of the ECB is already a source of tension with the Bundesbank .
The ECB and the Bank of Italy purchased 37.4 billion euros of Italian bonds under the Pandemic Emergency Purchasing Program (PEPP), or 21.6% of total purchases in April -May, while the theoretical share of Italy is only 17%.
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The gap is even wider for operations carried out under the Public Sector Purchasing Program (PSPP), with 26.5% of purchases for Italy and only 13.9% for Germany according to calculations from Reuters.