The official site of Italy's central bank

Key Eurosystem interest rates

The ECB’s Governing Council sets the key interest rates for the Euro area. These are
- the interest rate on the main refinancing operations;
- the interest rate on the deposit facility;
- the interest rate on the marginal lending facility.

The interest rate on the main refinancing operations, which provide the bulk of the liquidity required by the system, signals the ECB’s monetary policy stance to the market by indicating the conditions at which the ECB is willing to enter into transactions with the market.

The other two interest rates are on operations that can be conducted at the request of the counterparties and they represent, as a rule, the upper and lower limits of the overnight interest rate.