Last week, head of the European Central Bank, Christine Legarde, said: "We are not here [in states' public debt] to reduce risk premiums, that is not the ECB's task." After receiving pressure and protests from all sides, he stood face-to-face in the early morning of 19 March, as well as from social media, with the message that the main European public bank has changed its decision: "Unconventional times require unusual decisions. Our commitment to the euro has no limits. During our term of office we have decided to use all the instruments at our disposal."

The serious coronavirus crisis threatened to revive the wounds occasionally healed after the euro crisis by seeing the increase in risk premiums for public debts in several countries, especially as it stifles the financing of public funds that the countries of southern Europe already have to mobilise. The Governing Council of the ECB met urgently on the night of Wednesday – 18 – and agreed on a purchase plan of EUR 750 billion in public and private assets. In the first assessment, some experts have underlined the importance of this decision, both because of the amount of money it mobilizes and because it can benefit the countries most affected by COVID-19, for example, by securing the funding of governments for their stimulus plans from Europe.

The emergency programme to deal with the coronavirus pandemic will be in place until the end of the year and, for example, to take the measure of the plan, it can be said that those EUR 75 billion that it will mobilise are almost three quarters of Spain’s gross domestic product.