The European Central Bank will deliver its rate decision on Thursday, September 13th, at 11:45 GMT. ECB President Mario Draghi will begin his press conference at 12:30 GMT and will be on stage for about one hour.

Implementing QE tapering with a dovish twist

The Frankfurt-based institution is not expected to announce any policy changes. It has already laid out its moves back in June and recent developments have not been sufficient to alter the course. Beginning in October, they will reduce the monthly buying of bonds from €30 to €15 billion. The reduced pace is set to run until the end of the year and from 2019, the ECB will not buy any more bonds. The Quantitative Easing program, announced in January 2015 and implemented from March that year, is reaching its end.

Back in June, the Bank added conditions to the gradual withdrawal from the accommodative monetary policy. It depends on rising inflation and on the outlooks evolving as expected. The ECB also pledged to keep interest rates unchanged through the end of summer 2019. Draghi clarified in July that this means September next year rather than earlier, as some translations had suggested. That was the dovish twist that resulted in the downfall of the EUR/USD.

This time, the ECB convenes just ahead of the implementation of the tapering, and like with the announcement of the move, it may add a dovish twist. Draghi is a known dove that hurt the common currency on many occasions. It will not be hard for him this time around.

He will likely stress the conditionality of the next moves and will remind everybody that a rate hike is due at least one year from now. If he emphasizes that the ECB may wait with rate hikes to a later date, it could weigh on the Euro.