The position and activities of the European Central Bank

The aim of this diploma thesis is to evaluate what influence has the ECB decision-making on the Eurozone economy and above all to consider the ECB's involvement in solving of the recent financial and persisting European debt crisis. First two chapters represent rather a theoretical part of the thesis, in which the author is dealing generally with the importance and the role of the ECB in the course of the European integration, including its origin, its management structure and internal decision-making process. The second chapter focuses in detail on the ECB's tasks and competencies with emphasise mainly on the monetary policy and on the clarification how a so called transmission mechanism enables the measures adopted within the monetary policy to transform into the real economy. There is also more elaborated the primary task of ECB which is to maintain the price stability. The second part of this thesis is more analytical and reflects current trends and development in the EU banking sector with an accent on the ECB's attitudes. The recent financial crisis is discussed in the third chapter together with the new regulatory rules. Financial crisis tend to have some joint characteristics like e.g. the source of their origin that often lies in an excessive and rapid loan expansion, in leverage increase,..