Agreement on Net Financial Assets

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The Agreement on Net Financial Assets (ANFA) is an agreement between the European Central Bank and the national central banks of the Eurosystem on the acquisition of financial assets.

The ANFA serves to protect monetary policy. Since the beginning of 2003 it has regulated the extent to which the national central banks may conduct business for their own account within the scope of their national tasks. It gives the national central banks leeway to acquire government bonds or other claims and securities beyond the monetary policy requirements. Based on Art. 14.4 of the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and the European Central Bank, such acquisitions are carried out by the national central banks themselves; the related profits or losses will not be communitized.

The content of the agreement was initially kept secret and was known only to a few top officials even in the Eurosystem's central banks. According to ECB President Mario Draghi , government bond purchases under the ANFA agreement are solely matters for the national central banks, which make independent decisions. The reasons for such purchases are often very difficult for the ECB to understand ("often ... very hard to understand") .

After the doctoral student Daniel Hoffmann and the WELT had discovered enormous sums of such acquisitions, the ECB published the agreement and a question-and-answer catalog on February 5, 2016. According to the detailed presentation of the ECB, financial assets are acquired as part of ANFA that neither serve monetary policy purposes nor are required as a counterpart to equity and pension provisions. The economist Hans-Werner Sinn criticizes the fact that “you can print money in your own cellar that is recognized as legal tender in other countries”.

Through ANFA operations, the central banks of France, Italy and other member states are said to have acquired government bonds amounting to several hundred billion euros, for which neither these central banks nor the ECB are accountable. According to the ECB, the ANFA transactions are not motivated by monetary policy, but could be prohibited by the Governing Council with a two-thirds majority. A general ban on national money creation would, however, require legal changes. Yves Mersch , member of the ECB's executive board, admitted when asked that Ireland had broken the ANFA in the past.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ECB press conference, December 3, 2015. (English)
  2. ↑ The Controversial Past of ECB Chief Draghi , Die Welt, December 13, 2015.
  3. ↑ ECB clears up secret bond purchases - a bit , Die Welt, December 10, 2015.
  4. ↑ Hoffmann, D. (2015) The ECB in crisis . Berlin: Pro Business Verlag.
  5. ↑ Welt, November 19, 2015
  6. ↑ Explanations of the European Central Bank on ANFA.
  7. ^ Philip Plickert: Secret money printing in Rome and Paris. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . December 7, 2015, accessed December 7, 2015 .
  8. ↑ The Big Secret of Europe's Money Makers , Die Welt, December 1, 2015.
  9. ↑ ECB press release of December 10, 2015
  10. ↑ Philip Plickert: Monetary State Financing - The Central Banker's Pinocchio Moment , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 11, 2015.