Euro zone banks are supplying credit to all corners of the bloc and the ECB upcoming round of cheap loans is merely designed to "protect" that channel, ECB board member Benoit Coeure said.

"Today, the bank lending channel in the euro area is fully operational after years of fragmentation," Coeure told.

"To protect this achievement, we decided at our last monetary policy meeting in March to launch a new series of targeted long-term refinancing operations, 'TLTRO-III', starting in September 2019."