CEE EU Central Banks’ Policy during the First Wave of COVID-19

Abstract Faced with COVID-19 crisis, central banks have once again become one of the key players in the economies. The aim of this article is to analyse the actions of Central and Eastern European central banks within all their roles (monetary policy, micro-and macroprudential policy, deposit guaranteeing and resolution) during the first coronavirus wave. The analysis shows that they were active in various fields, not only those that were traditionally always assigned to central banks (i.e. monetary policy, although this was the major field of activity). Scope of the intervention naturally depended on the shape of the national financial safety net. At the same time, the use of monetary policy tools depended on the adopted monetary policy strategy. Practice of central banks’ actions shows that central banks with a wide range of monetary tools reacted later. It seems that the scope and intensity of the use of monetary policy tools was not influenced by the general role of the central bank in the financial safety net. The monetary toolkit used by banks was based on a standard set of instruments with modified conditions of application (scale, transaction parameters and their type, collaterals and counterparties). Although transactions with specific parameters were sometimes implemented for the first time, they can still be included in the framework of classic monetary policy tools. In areas other than monetary policy, central banks were much less active. The most disturbing seems to be the passivity in the field of macroprudential policy.