The Eurosystem conducts monthly longer-term refinancing basic tender operations with a three-month maturity in order to steady the supply of liquidity and to assist banks which are active in the money market in the security of their operations.

The operational features of the longer-term refinancing operations can be summarised as follows:

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

The timeline for every offered longer-term refinancing basic tender will be as follows: