This paper introduces the European Central Bank’s Multi Country model (ECB-MC), a coherent macroeconomic framework designed to support economic forecasting and policy analysis within the Eurosystem. The ECB-MC captures the economic dynamics of the five major economies in the euro area – Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands – which account for more than 80 percent of the euro area total GDP. By incorporating detailed structural features and data-driven insights, the model provides the main reference for the ECB’s staff macroeconomic projections, acting as a disciplined tool for forecasting, enabling scenario, risk and sensitivity analyses, and giving a framework to understand the transmission channels of various economic shocks. The paper offers a detailed account of the structure, the estimation and the model properties, and provides a primer on the potential uses of the ECB-MC in the Eurosystem macroeconomic projections.
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