The ECB sets the price of money for the whole eurozone through three official rates. Together they form a corridor that steers the rates banks charge each other, and ultimately what households and firms pay.
Main refinancing rate — the headline policy rate, the cost of the ECB's regular lending to banks.
Deposit facility rate — what banks earn for parking spare cash at the ECB overnight. Since the era of abundant reserves this has become the rate that matters most for market rates.
Marginal lending rate — the ceiling: the cost of borrowing from the ECB overnight.
Why they move
The ECB raises rates to cool inflation and cuts them to support a weak economy. Rates were negative or near zero for much of the 2010s, then rose sharply from 2022 to fight the inflation surge. These are eurozone-wide — one setting for twenty countries.
Source: ECB.