Today saw the ending of Greek sovereign & sovereign-guaranteed debt eligibility at the ECB.  The weekly liquidity-providing operation that ended today, was providing €151B ($170B) to euro-area banks.  The new operation, the first without Greek sovereign debt & starting today, is for €104B, a week-on-week drop of €47.2B.  The Greek banks will now switch to Emergency Liquidity Assistance from the Greek central bank for their liquidity needs.  This liquidity is slightly more expensive than ECB liquidity.  Also, it can be switched off at any time by a vote of the ECB governing council.  At the moment, the ECB seems to be in a wait-and-see mode on ELA.  But it has already started to turn the screw a little.  ECB chief economist & governing council member Peter Praet said that ELA is for short-term needs only & that it essentially is a "bridge to somewhere."  To get an idea of what this might mean, we can look back to Cyprus in 2013, when national banks also came to rely on ELA after the ECB implemented a similar sovereign debt eligibility rule there.  With Cyprus unable to agree on a program, the ECB issued a press release, that said, "The Governing Council of the European Central Bank decided to maintain the current level of Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) until Mon, 25 Mar 2013."  "Thereafter, Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) could only be considered if an EU/IMF programme is in place that would ensure the solvency of the concerned banks."  If the ECB's track record & Praet's statement are anything to go by, Greece may find that abandoning the troika program may also mean abandoning liquidity for its banks.