The European Central Bank on Monday revealed it would end conducting one-week Swiss franc liquidity swap operations after Jan. 31, ending an emergency measure put in place to combat the financial crisis.

"The decision was made against the background of declining demand and improved conditions on the funding markets", the ECB said.

Previously ECB has been granting up to €25 billion of Swiss francs ($35.95 billion) to the market through foreign-exchange swaps via a one-week revolving facility over recent months.

The ECB will steadily remove the extraordinary measures it took after the collapse of U. S. investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

In November, it claimed it would harden the credit rating requirements it imposes on certain bonds that it regards as collateral for its lending operations.

The bank confirmed that it would return back from providing liquidity for longer than three months at a time, placing the most significant initiative towards a neutral policy stance and away from the extraordinarily supportive stance of 2009 came in December.

Another more potentially challenging moment is yet to be processed at the end of the year, when the ECB intends to restore its old credit rating threshold of single-A-minus for bonds it accepts as collateral.