Editing Maastricht Treaty (section)

===The European Central Bank mandate===
These criteria in turn dictated the mandate of the [[European System of Central Banks]] comprising the national central banks, but to include the prospective currency-issuing [[European Central Bank]]. As envisaged by the Treaty,<ref>TEU p. 190</ref> the ECB replaced its shadow [[European Monetary Institute]] on 1 June 1998, and began exercising its full powers with the introduction of the euro on 1 January 1999.<ref name="ECB-2020">{{cite web|url=http://www.ecb.int/ecb/history/emu/html/index.en.html |title=ECB: Economic and Monetary Union|date=10 July 2020|publisher=ECB |access-date=28 September 2020}}</ref>

The Treaty dedicates the EU central banking system to price stability, and gives it "a degree of independence from elected officials" greater even "than that of its putative model, the German [[Bundesbank]]".<ref name="McDowell">{{cite journal |last1=McDowell |first1=Manfred |title=European Labour in a Single Market: '1992' and the Implications of Maastricht |journal=History of European Ideas |date=1994 |volume=19 |issue=1–3 |pages=453–459, 455–456 |doi=10.1016/0191-6599(94)90247-X |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/019165999490247X#! |access-date=13 September 2020}}</ref>  Whereas the Bundesbank, under article 12 of its constitution, is "bound to support the general economic policy of the [German] Federal Government", the obligation of the ECB to "support the general economic policies in the Community" is to be "without prejudice" to price stability, the Bank's "primary objective". It is further conditioned by the express understanding that "neither the ECB, nor a national central bank, nor any member of their decision-making bodies, shall seek or take instructions from Community institutions or bodies from any Government of a Member State or from any other body."<ref>TEU, pp. 29, 31</ref>

Seeming to further preclude any possibility of the single-currency banking system being used to regulate European financial markets in support of potentially inflationary policies, the Treaty expressly prohibits the ECB or any Member State central extending "overdraft facilities or any other type of credit facility" to "Community institutions or bodies, central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of Member States", or the purchase from them debt instruments.<ref>TEU, p. 26</ref>