European Central Bank (ECB) Meeting Schedule

The full calendar of scheduled meetings for the ECB is outlined below.  Bear in mind that it is theoretically possible, in extraordinary times, for the ECB to hold extra, emergency meetings on top of this schedule.

The European Central Bank (ECB) holds three different types of meeting:

Governing Council monetary policy meeting: the meetings where monetary policy, including interest rates, is set for all of the Euro Area and therefore the meetings that have most market impact and grab the headlines.  The ECB currently holds 8 of these meetings per year (approx every 6 weeks) with the initial policy announcement at 13:45 CET (local time) and a press conference afterwards starting at 14:30 CET.  The ECB also release new staff or Eurosystem macroeconomic forecasts at these meetings on a quarterly basis.  The participants of these meetings are the ECB President, the ECB Vice-President, the ECB Executive Board (4 members) and the heads of each of the National Central Banks (NCBs) of the Euro Area.  Voting members rotate each month.

Governing Council non-monetary policy meeting: as the name implies, these are meetings of ECB Governing Council which do NOT result in monetary policy decisions and therefore rarely result in any headlines or market moves.  The participants of these meetings are the same as the policy meetings.

General Council Meetings: these are also non-monetary policy meetings and also rarely result in any headlines or market moves.  The General Council is comprised of the ECB President, the ECB Vice-President and the heads of National Central Banks (NCBs) of all countries inside the EU (rather than just the Euro Area).  The ECB Executive Board (4 members), the President of the EU Council and one member of the European Commission can also attend the meetings but cannot vote.

ECB speakers observe a “quiet period” (formerly known as a “purdah”) for seven days before a scheduled monetary policy meeting.  Governing Council members “avoid making comments that could influence expectations about monetary policy decisions”.  For more details on blackouts, see our central bank blackout summary.

2017

2018

Source of schedule: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/calendars/mgcgc/html/index.en.html