The evolving role of the ECB during the euro-crisis.

After a first decade of – more or less – business as usual - during the Euro-crisis, the European Central Bank started to play an additional role: supporting states and banks facing the crisis. As a consequence, it has been accused to exceed its own powers as codified in the EU foundational treaties. The allegations were related to the scarce respect of its own legal framework (competences and limits established by the EU treaties); secondly, they regarded her invasion of the field of economic policy while it had to limit its intervention to monetary policy; finally, it was pointed out how it played a too “political” role. The ECB’s intervention - even if unconventional – was required by the critical moment and felt within the scope and the borders of monetary policy. Being the ECB a technocratic institution, it plays a peculiar “political” activity when it is called to exercise a discretion within the range of multiple policy options. Its freedom of judgment has to be grounded and duly motivated on economic reasoning, relating it to price stability.