The ECB has to withdraw 1.6 billion euros from its reserves – to compensate for losses that it has incurred to a large extent from liabilities in the Target 2 system. It is clear that some people are thinking of the old discussion in Germany as to whether the so-called target balances must inevitably lead to ruin.

However, the losses from Target 2 are now of a different nature than many Target critics had once imagined. The concern expressed at the time was that, for example, the withdrawal of a country from the euro could lead to it not paying its debts from the target system and the others sitting on their claims.

Now, however, the ECB's losses from its target liabilities are a consequence of the turnaround in interest rates. Everywhere in the central banks' balance sheets, it is noticeable that interest rate risks are becoming striking.

The reason for this is that on the asset side of many central bank balance sheets there are now bonds that were acquired in the course of bond purchases and whose low interest rates are fixed in the long term. On the liabilities side, on the other hand, there are positions for which interest expenses are rising rapidly with the interest rate turnaround.

In the case of the national central banks in the Eurosystem, these are the deposits of commercial banks; in the case of the ECB, which does not manage these accounts itself, it is the target liabilities to the individual central banks. Through these, the ECB feels, so to speak, the incongruent interest rate deadlines in the central bank system.