ECB Data Portal (Statistical Data Warehouse)

The ECB Data Portal (formerly the Statistical Data Warehouse, SDW) is the European Central Bank’s public statistics service: euro-area monetary aggregates, interest rates, exchange rates, bank balance sheets, securities holdings, and the Eurosystem’s own asset-purchase data (APP and PEPP). The data is free and public, served over an SDMX REST API that needs no key. Used in, for example, Costain, Nuno & Thomas, where it supplies Eurosystem bond holdings and purchase paths to calibrate net bond supply and the maturity distribution of holdings under APP and PEPP.

• Cost: free, public.
• API key: none required.
• Coverage: euro-area and member-state series, many from 1999 onward; exchange rates and some series earlier; daily, monthly, quarterly frequencies.
• Home: https://data.ecb.europa.eu

Access

The data API serves any series by its dataset and series key. Append ?format=csvdata for a flat CSV, no authentication:

# Daily euro reference exchange rate, USD per EUR, last 3 observations, no key
curl -sL -H "Accept: text/csv" \
  "https://data-api.ecb.europa.eu/service/data/EXR/D.USD.EUR.SP00.A?lastNObservations=3&format=csvdata" \
  -o eur_usd.csv

The path is service/data/<DATAFLOW>/<SERIES_KEY>. The dataflow (here EXR, exchange rates) sets the dimension order; the series key is the dot-separated dimension values (D.USD.EUR.SP00.A = daily, USD, against EUR, spot, average). Leave a dimension blank to fetch all of its values, or use + to list several. Find the dataflow and its dimensions by browsing the dataset on https://data.ecb.europa.eu and copying the series key it shows.

Load in Python

import requests, io, pandas as pd

r = requests.get(
    "https://data-api.ecb.europa.eu/service/data/EXR/D.USD.EUR.SP00.A",
    params={"format": "csvdata", "startPeriod": "2020-01-01"},
    headers={"Accept": "text/csv"},
    timeout=60,
)
df = pd.read_csv(io.StringIO(r.text))
# Key columns: KEY (series id), TIME_PERIOD, OBS_VALUE.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

• The SDW was rebranded the ECB Data Portal; old SDW URLs may not resolve. sdw.ecb.europa.eu links and the legacy SDW API have been superseded by data.ecb.europa.eu and data-api.ecb.europa.eu. Point pipelines at the current host.
• Series keys are positional and dataflow-specific. A key like D.USD.EUR.SP00.A only makes sense against the EXR dimension order; the same dotted string means nothing in another dataflow. Always pair a key with its dataflow, and read the dimension order from the dataset page.
• Asset-purchase series are split across PSPP, CSPP, CBPP, ABSPP, and PEPP. The APP is the sum of its component programmes; PEPP is reported separately. Adding holdings across programmes requires picking the right component series and not double-counting the APP total against its parts.
• Book value, not market value. Eurosystem securities-holdings series are generally reported at amortised book value, and purchase data is at settlement. Do not treat them as mark-to-market positions.
• Blank dimension means “all”, which can return a large multi-series file. Omitting a dimension value fetches every series along that dimension. Filter deliberately, or a single call can pull thousands of series.
• Revisions and breaks. Monetary and balance-sheet statistics are revised, and methodology breaks exist across the sample. Record the access date and watch for series discontinuities before splicing.

Common dataflows

Dataflow	Content
EXR	Exchange rates (reference and effective)
BSI	Bank (MFI) balance-sheet items, monetary aggregates
FM	Financial-market and money-market interest rates
ILM	Eurosystem balance-sheet and liquidity items
SEC	Securities issues and holdings
YC	Euro-area yield curve (AAA and all-bond)

Confirm the dataflow code and its dimensions on the portal before building a series key; the list above is a starting point, not the full set.

Citation

Cite the European Central Bank, the ECB Data Portal, the series key and dataflow, the URL, and the access date, for example: European Central Bank, ECB Data Portal, series EXR/D.USD.EUR.SP00.A, retrieved from https://data.ecb.europa.eu, accessed YYYY-MM-DD. Record the series key and frequency so the pull is reproducible.