The European Central Bank (ECB) left its main refinancing rate unchanged at 0.00 percent on Thursday, as widely expected.

Its interest rates on the marginal lending facility and the deposit facility were also left unchanged at 0.25 percent and -0.50 percent, respectively.

In its policy statement, the ECB repeated again the Governing Council expects its key interest rates to remain at their present or lower levels until it has seen the inflation outlook robustly converge to a level sufficiently close to, but below, 2% within its projection horizon, and such convergence has been consistently reflected in underlying inflation dynamics.

In addition, the European regulator noted that in November net purchases were restarted under the Governing Council’s asset purchase programme (APP) at a monthly pace of €20 billion. The Governing Council expects them to run for as long as necessary to reinforce the accommodative impact of its policy rates, and to end shortly before it starts raising the key ECB interest rates.

In addition, the ECB promised to continue reinvesting, in full, the principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the APP for an extended period of time past the date when it starts raising the key ECB interest rates, and in any case for as long as necessary to maintain favourable liquidity conditions and an ample degree of monetary accommodation.