In today's monetary policy meeting the European Central Bank cut the benchmark interest rates lowering it to 1 percent. Analysts were thinking that ECB will cut the interest rates somewhere in the range of .25 to .50 bases points. EU Central Bank decided to cut the interest rates by a quarter percentage point to help to improve the continental Europe's recession.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Vice-President and I are very pleased to welcome you to our first press conference of 2009. Let me therefore wish you all a very Happy New Year. I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome Slovakia as the 16th country to adopt the euro as its currency. Accordingly, Mr Šramko, the Governor of Národná banka Slovenska, became a member of the Governing Council on 1 January 2009.

Today the European Central Bank governing body has cut the key interest rate bank rate bringing it down to 2 percent. This is done with the hope of stimulating the EU economy by making money more available in the market.

The European Central Bank is offering banks unlimited emergency loans at below market rates, in a co-ordinated bid to inject liquidity into the money markets.

Over the past two months, the European Central Bank (ECB) has conducted gold sales amounting to 37 tons of gold.