Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme

The Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) was the ECB's fire hose when COVID hit. In March 2020, as lockdowns spread and the borrowing costs of countries like Italy started to spike, the ECB announced it would buy hundreds of billions of euros of bonds, later expanded to 1.85 trillion.

It was more flexible than earlier QE programmes, letting the ECB lean harder on whichever country was under most stress. New buying ended in 2022, and the ECB later stopped reinvesting the proceeds of bonds as they matured.