Glossary
Understand the ECB vocabulary
- Asset
- Austerity
- Balance sheet
- Bank reserves
- Bond
- Bond market
- Carbon footprint
- Central bank
- Central bank governor
- Central bank independence
- Civil society organisation
- Climate and environmental crisis
- Climate neutrality
- Collateral framework
- Corporate Sector Purchase Programme (CSPP)
- Coupon
- Credit Rating Agency (CRA)
- Debt
- Debt sustainability
- Deflation
- Deposit guarantee scheme
- Digital euros
- Eurogroup
- European Central Bank
- European Central Bank's Executive Board
- European Central Bank's Governing Council
- European Central Bank's strategy review
- European Commission
- European Council
- European Court of Justice
- European Green Deal
- European Parliament
- European Stability Mechanism
- European Union Treaties
- Eurosystem
- Eurozone/euro area
- EU taxonomy (for sustainable activities)
- Financial assets
- Financial speculation
- Fiscal rules
- Globalisation
- Green targeted longer-term refinancing operations (green TLTROs)
- Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
- Growth
- Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP)
- Helicopter money
- Household
- Inflation
- Inflation target
- Interest rate
- Investment bank
- Investor
- Key interest rate/policy rate
- Liquidity
- Loan
- Loan guarantees
- Mandate
- Market neutrality
- Member of the European Parliament (MEP)
- Monetary dialogue
- Monetary policy
- Monetary financing
- Negative interest rate
- Pandemic Emergency Purchasing Programme (PEPP)
- Price stability
- Paris Agreement
- Primary mandate
- Private sector
- Quantitative easing
- Real economy
- Risk
- Secondary mandate
- Sovereign debt
- Sustainable finance
- Targeted longer-term refinancing Operations (TLTROs)
- Technocrat
- Treasury
- Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)
- Universal Basic Income
- US Federal Reserve
Negative interest rate
When a bank or institution which borrows money receives interest payments, rather than the bank who is lending out the money. For the ECB, this means that when it lends money to private banks, it will receive less than it originally lent out. Negative interest rates are used by the ECB to encourage lending, spending and investments by private banks, rather than them saving the cash.
