The main refinancing operations, with a weekly frequency and a maturity of one week, are the most important monetary policy instrument used by the Eurosystem for money market management.

The operational features of main refinancing operations may be summarised as follows:

• They are liquidity-providing transactions.
• They take place regularly each week (in accordance with the pre-announced tender calendar).
• They are executed in a decentralised manner by the national central banks as standard tenders.
• All counterparties which satisfy the general eligibility criteria may submit bids for main refinancing operations.
• All assets included in the single framework for eligible assets of the Eurosystem (see under Collateral) are eligible as collateral for main refinancing operations.

The timeline for every offered main refinancing operation will be as follows:

The main and the longer-term refinancing operations are executed according to an indicative calendar published by the Eurosystem. The calendar is published at least three months before the start of the year for which it is valid. When drawing up the calendar, due account is taken of bank holidays in the individual member states.