The European Central Bank announced further stimulus measures Thursday to help Europe’s economy and counter the coronavirus impact.

The bank said it will expand its bond buying program by another 600 billion euros ($675 billion). This brings the total pandemic emergency purchase program to 1.35 trillion euros ($1.52 trillion)

ECB said “the expansion will further ease the general monetary policy stance, supporting funding conditions in the real economy, especially for businesses and households.” It says the stimulus will last until at least the end of June 2021 and that it will keep buying bonds “until it judges that the coronavirus crisis phase is over.”
The ECB reiterated that it stands ready to use all tools necessary to help the economy.

The European Union economy will shrink by a record 7.5% this year, and the drop could be even more precipitous across the 19 countries that use the euro, the European Commission warned in mid-May.

It’s a much steeper decline than the region suffered following the 2008 global financial crisis, and a more pessimistic outlook than forecast by the International Monetary Fund in late April.

Some Background: Consumer prices are expected to fall significantly, while spending on coronavirus relief measures will push the deficits of European governments from just 0.6% of GDP in 2019 to around 8.5% this year. The Commission predicts that EU unemployment will increase from 6.7% in 2019 to 9% this year.

“Europe is experiencing an economic shock without precedent since the Great Depression. Both the depth of the recession and the strength of recovery will be uneven, conditioned by the speed at which lockdowns can be lifted, the importance of services like tourism in each economy and by each country’s financial resources,” EU economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said in a statement in mid-May.