Philip Lane, chief economist of the ECB, said the ECB was ready to deal with any market disruptions that might occur if the Fed began to downsize QE.
"the ECB is not a passive bystander," Lane said in an interview. If spillover effects affect the financing of the eurozone, we are willing and able to take appropriate action, as we have demonstrated.
Lane stressed that policymakers are determined to maintain a favourable financing environment in the euro zone, suggesting that it will take some time to decide how to make bond purchases once the epidemic-fighting emergency bond-buying program expires.
"We don't need to think about it too long in advance," Lane said. The next meeting of the management committee is in September and is still "very far" from the March deadline of the emergency bond-buying programme.
"Autumn and winter will provide us with more information about the epidemic, so we should use autumn to think about these issues," Lane said.
After a smooth second quarter, the Delta strain is a drag on the economy, bottlenecks are longer than expected and global growth is slowing.
All in all, he said, "our forecast for the whole year is roughly the same as it was in June." At the time, the ECB expected the economy to grow by 4.6 per cent in 2021.