The European Central Bank kept its key interest rates at record lows Thursday and made no changes to its massive bond-buying programme in the first policy meeting of 2017, a spokeswoman said.

The bank's governing council voted to hold the benchmark refinancing rate at zero percent and the deposit facility rate at minus 0.40 percent, she said.

Policymakers were widely expected to stay the course with their monetary stimulus, after announcing an extension of the ECB's asset-purchasing scheme last month.