As late as March 2010, Jean-Claude Trichet, then head ofthe ECB, boastedthatsimply belonging to the euro areaautomaticallyensuredbalance-of-payments financing.
And what looks like ECB emergency liquidity for periphery banks is just as much balanceofpaymentsfinancing for the entire economy - something that has previously tended to be provided by the IMF. ( I went into this distinction in greater depth a while ago).