ECB to End Bond-Buying Program in December as Crisis-Era Policies Wind Down

The bank signals it won’t raise interest rates before next summer, suggesting the gap with the Fed will widen

Tom Fairless and

Brian Blackstone

Updated June 14, 2018 12:09 p.m. ET

RIGA, Latvia—The European Central Bank is closing a chapter on one controversial policy, government bond purchases, while extending the life of another: negative interest rates.

The central bank Thursday laid out plans to wind down its giant bond-buying program by the end of this year, but said it likely would wait “at least through the summer of 2019” before raising its deposit rate, now at minus 0.4%.

The...