Frankfurt: A quiet revolution is under way to make the European Central Bank’s voice a little louder.

Since last summer, the central bank’s governing council has debated whether to drop its long-held resistance to revealing what happens when members gather on the 36th floor of Frankfurt’s Eurotower to set monetary policy.

Currently, the ECB publishes a record of its policy deliberations with a 30-year lag. It has traditionally objected to the publication of minutes for fear this could expose governing council members, who must set monetary policy in the interest of the Eurozone as a whole, to domestic pressures. But the threat of a vicious bout of deflation now outweighs the case for withholding information.

Alternative versions of minutes of the ECB’s policy meetings, known internally as dry runs, have circulated among the six members of the ECB’s executive board since the winter and, in recent months, among the national central bank governors who join them on the council.

In July, ECB president Mario Draghi announced one of these dry runs would eventually form a template for public accounts, set for release as early as the beginning of next year. The central bank is then set to ditch its monthly monetary policy meetings in favour of a US Federal Reserve-style six-week calendar.

The ECB is expected to publish the minutes between three and five weeks after each meeting, say Eurosystem officials close to the discussions. The documents are likely to avoid showing the votes of individual members.

Other decisions on just how much the accounts should reveal remain under discussion and it is still possible the start date will be pushed beyond January.

The decision to break with tradition and join the Fed, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan in publishing accounts is a big step for the ECB.

The workings of central bankers have historically been shrouded in secrecy. But in recent decades monetary policy makers around the world have opened up, as their greater independence to set interest rates has forced their deliberations out of the shadows.

While public accountability is one factor, there is another reason for such openness. Policy makers say they have a better chance of hitting their inflation targets if the public understand the reasoning behind their decisions and change their expectations over the future path of prices accordingly.

With inflation at little more than a quarter of the ECB’s target of below but close to 2 per cent, concerns that policy makers are unwilling to do enough to hit their target have made more transparency essential.

Peter Praet, a member of the executive board of the ECB, told the Financial Times last Wednesday: “Publishing the accounts might help in improving the signal to noise ratio of our communications. We need to make sure our message to markets and the public is even more coherent.”

Praet added: “What the accounts will bring are the major pros and cons behind each of the policies. That becomes more important when you’re at the zero bound and you are taking exceptional measures.”

Officials continue to grapple with how to ensure the account is as transparent as possible without changing the nature of the council’s discussions. There is no obvious template for the ECB to follow. Unlike the Fed, the BoE and the BoJ, the Eurozone’s monetary guardians do not vote at every meeting as the council places more weight on consensus than other central banks.

Economists have welcomed the measure, which they believe will lessen some of the confusion — and market volatility — caused by the constant chatter that naturally stems from a council which, from January, will include 24 people from 19 central banks.

But they also question how clear the message can be when views among policy makers, notably those of Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann, have at times proven disparate.

“I don’t think accounts can prevent the cacophony from happening. But perhaps it will cut through it,” said Huw Pill, chief European economist of Goldman Sachs.

“The discipline of writing things down will help the governing council coalesce around the message,” said Richard Barwell senior European economist at Royal Bank of Scotland. “But there are some quite fundamental disagreements on the council. It will be interesting to see how transparent they will be about that.”

He added: “Transparency is great in theory, but bruising in practice. They are doing the right thing but it may not feel like it.”

— Financial Times