The European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) Governing Council has decided to reschedule the launch of its new Eurosystem Collateral Management System (ECMS) to the first half of 2025. The exact launch date will be communicated in October 2024. The decision to reschedule the launch has been taken in the light of an assessment conducted by the ECB Market Infrastructure Board (MIB), which concluded that additional time was required to achieve sufficient readiness for a smooth go-live, despite the good progress made in the testing phase over the summer.
The rescheduling will support national central banks of the euro area and the counterparties that will be joining the ECMS by enabling them to achieve sufficient testing coverage in a stable environment to ensure their readiness by the revised go-live date. The ECMS will allow counterparties to manage assets used as collateral in Eurosystem credit operations. It is closely linked to the TARGET2-Securities (T2S) platform for the settlement of securities and to the T2 system for the transfer of central bank liquidity.
The ECMS is a unified system that will replace the existing systems of the 20 euro area national central banks that are currently used in managing assets used as collateral for Eurosystem credit operations. Together with the other TARGET Services offered by the Eurosystem, enhanced liquidity management features will be introduced and cash, securities and collateral will flow freely across Europe.