The European Central Bank said on Thursday it would look to wind down its bond-buying programme by the end of the year. In a statement following a meeting of the Governing Council, the ECB said it would continue its programme of buying €30bn a month of bonds until the end of September, as planned. Beginning in October, it plans to reduce purchases to €15bn a month to the end of December, then bring them to an end, provided data confirms the bank's medium-term inflation outlook.

As expected, the ECB left interest rates unchanged, but attention was more keenly focused on the central bank's move to join the Federal Reserve in beginning to tighten policy in the aftermath of the 2007-09 financial crisis. The the ECB kept its deposit rate unchanged at -0.4% and said it wouldn't raise interest rates “at least through the summer of 2019”.