ECB makes crucial collateral climate change

PRESS RELEASE

Tuesday 29 July 2025

ECB makes crucial collateral climate change

Today, one of Positive Money's longstanding campaigns was taken forward by the  European Central Bank.

The ECB has announced that it will introduce a new measure within the collateral framework to better manage financial risks related to the climate crisis.

The collateral framework allows banks to borrow from the ECB by offering financial assets – like bonds – as collateral, much like a homeowner offering their property to secure a mortgage.

By determining which assets are accepted, the ECB holds an enormous influence over the financial system, shaping the behaviour of banks and market participants.

Bruno De Conti is Senior Researcher at Positive Money Europe, a Brussels based non profit organisation that campaigns for a fairer economic system for people and the planet

On the face of it, this is the kind of development we have long been campaigning for at Positive Money - for the ECB to stop pandering to polluters and help protect the planet. In this announcement they are taking an important step towards the fulfilment of the ECB’s primary mandate (price stability and financial stability) as well as its secondary mandate (promoting the general economic policies of the European Union). However, as always more can be done and this only focuses on marketable assets issued by non-financial corporations, which represent a smaller part of the collateral of the Eurosystem. Furthermore, the focus is only on climate risks. It will be important to expand the focus to biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse

“Changes to the collateral framework are a good start, but the ECB needs to go further and offer lower borrowing rates to businesses operating in more sustainable industries. It can be expensive to be a part of the green transition and the ECB is able to play its part - and it should!”

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Positive Money Europe is a research and advocacy nonprofit organisation, working on the economic system for social justice and a liveable planet.

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