That will be followed by Mario Draghi's press conference at 1330 GMT
The euro is trading a little lower against the dollar ahead of the events to come, owing to the sluggish PMI prints earlier today. That said, a lot of the bad news and dovishness is largely priced in or at least that's what is expected from the ECB in today's monetary policy decision.
The ECB is to leave key interest rates unchanged so expect the language here to reflect very much the same kind of message that we saw back in December.
So, what are the key things to look out?
Firstly, look for any changes to the rate guidance in the statement. Expectation is for the central bank to leave that unchanged from last month: Key rates to remain at present levels at least through the summer of 2019 or in any case, for as long as necessary to ensure continued sustained convergence of inflation to the central bank's target of just below 2%.
If anything, the ECB is buying time right now to survey more economic data in Q1 2019 before making a decision on that. Given the circumstance, they are likely to angle towards changing the rate guidance in March should economic data continue to reinforce a further growth slowdown in the region.
Secondly, pay attention to the risk assessment when Draghi begins speaking. In December, the central bank opted to maintain that risks are still 'broadly balanced' but they debated making an official change to being 'tilted to the downside'. They did however acknowledge that the balance of risks are moving to the downside so a change here wouldn't be significantly damaging but it is the first step that needs to be taken for the central bank to pull back from its view to hike rates in Q3/Q4 this year.
The final item to look out for will be of any mention on discussions about more TLTROs. If the central bank does slip that in and puts a positive spin on the topic, it should help to underpin European assets in general and may help to build a slightly more optimistic narrative on the euro. That said, this is very much a theoretical support factor for now so don't expect much to come from this. Nonetheless, it's still something to be mindful about.
Other than that, it's very much just about feeding off the general tone from Draghi in his press conference. Markets are certainly anticipating him to be more dovish so just be wary if he doesn't deliver on that.
As mentioned in my earlier posts, the bar is set really low for the euro to potentially rebound towards 1.1400 since plenty of the negativity is largely priced in and Draghi's message should not deviate much from what we heard last week; being that "the Eurozone economy is experiencing a slowdown but is not headed towards a recession". That could be the same tagline used later today as well.
