The European Central Bank (ECB) published a package of Governing Council decisions spanning the Eurosystem’s collateral framework, TARGET market infrastructure arrangements, statistical reporting infrastructure and banking supervision enforcement. The annual review left unchanged the lists of acceptable non-regulated markets and recognised agency issuers for the collateral framework, but it reclassified three agency issuers’ haircut categories, and it approved a detailed implementation approach for revising the crisis-related credit facility for central counterparties (CCPs) in TARGET. Within the collateral framework, Caisse des dépôts et consignations and Finnvera PLC were moved to a more favourable haircut category after meeting the relevant quantitative criteria, while LfA Förderbank Bayern was reclassified from haircut category II to the more conservative category IV. The revised TARGET CCP credit facility framework is designed to enable prompt operationalisation of a liquidity backstop for eligible euro area CCPs under extreme crisis scenarios, with access conditional on the CCP being financially sound and having sound liquidity risk management. Separately, the Governing Council authorised publication of the May 2025 Financial Stability Review, which includes special features on crypto-market developments and linkages to the traditional financial sector, financial stability risks from trade tensions, and channels through which population ageing could raise financial stability concerns. The ECB also adopted legislative opinions on net stable funding ratio treatment of securities financing transactions under the Capital Requirements Regulation (CON/2025/9), amendments to corporate sustainability reporting and due diligence requirements (CON/2025/10), and the resilience of critical entities (CON/2025/11), updated its guide for national authorities consulting the ECB on draft legislation, recommended external auditors for Hrvatska narodna banka, approved funding and cost-sharing decisions supporting the Banks’ Integrated Reporting Dictionary (BIRD) Operational Tasks project, and reported banking supervision enforcement actions including total administrative penalties of EUR 1.24 million on the three SEB Baltics banks for internal model margin-of-conservatism non-compliance. The Annual Report on Sanctioning Activities in the Single Supervisory Mechanism in 2024 shows proceedings rose 19% and penalties 8% compared with 2023. The Financial Stability Review is scheduled for publication on 21 May 2025, while the legislative opinions and the recommendation on external auditors are to be published in due course on EUR-Lex; the updated collateral framework lists are available on the ECB’s website.

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