The European Central Bank bought no bonds last week as it works out plans to launch a new and more transparent scheme for purchasing sovereign debt.
This will be tied to intervention by the European rescue funds and political action.
In response to a renewed intensification of the debt crisis, ECB President Mario Draghi said on August 2 the ECB may buy more government bonds.
But this would happen only when countries had turned first to the region's rescue funds for help and agreed to strict conditions.
Details of the plan are still missing and in the meantime speculation of the shape of the new programme is making the rounds in the media.
Over the weekend, German magazine Der Spiegel said the ECB is considering setting interest rate thresholds for any purchases of struggling euro zone country's bonds so that it would buy such bonds if their interest rates exceeded a certain premium over German bonds.
The ECB responded by seeking to quash speculation, saying decisions had not yet been taken and that it was misleading to report otherwise.
Germany's Bundesbank also showed no signs today of lowering its resistance to bond purchases.
Some investors were disappointed by the lack of immediate ECB action after Draghi had raised their expectations in July by saying the ECB would "do whatever it takes" to save the euro, which had eased Italian and Spanish borrowing costs.
The ECB has barely used its existing bond-buy plan this year and has bought no bonds for 23 weeks despite an intensification of the euro zone debt crisis. The bank has grown more wary of the risks involved and doubtful of the programme's impact.
No previously bought bonds matured last week, and with no new purchases last week, the amount the ECB has spent since starting its Securities Markets Programme (SMP) in May 2010 remained at €211.5 billion.
Meanwhile, Italian Industry Minister Corrado Passera has strongly attacked Bundesbank criticism of ECB plans for intervention in bond markets.
Mr Passera said such comments disrupted markets.
The Italian government, including Prime Minister Mario Monti, has been increasingly critical in recent weeks over German reluctance to agree on action to lower Italy and Spain's crippling borrowing costs.
Mr Passera, speaking at a meeting in the Adriatic resort of Rimini, said Bundesbank criticism of ECB plans for bond buying "does not honour those who make them."
He said there had recently been an excess of "incoherent and disruptive communications which have also disturbed markets."
