Ch. 4 analyses the role which the European Central Bank and its monetary policy have played throughout the sovereign debt crisis and in its aftermath. This chapter explains in particular how the ECB under President Draghi has broadened its mandate, taking an increasingly active stance. While its assertiveness allowed it to quash the sovereign debt crisis, its further actions intended to unclog the monetary transmission mechanism to the real economies of the crisis stricken countries and its anti-deflation crusade have arguably manoeuvred the Frankfurt institution into very substantial debt management. In the reality of poor economic performance in the eurozone’s south, high ratios of non-performing loans and a creeping balance-of-payments crisis measured by the so-called Target claims, this policy has exposed the ECB to serious economic and political risks.