Due to the COVID crisis, European banks will have to repay around 500 billion euros to the ECB in a single day, which echoes the financial crisis of the 2010s. This repayment includes the largest payment to date, and experts predict that banks from Italy and Greece may struggle to meet this repayment. Spanish and Portuguese banks are not mentioned as potential strugglers. To find a way out, banks might turn to debt securities, but this could come with high risk premiums. As a result, an anti-crisis mechanism may need to be launched by the ECB to finance banks which do not have enough funds to repay the previous ECB anti-crisis mechanism, creating a difficult situation.
