In this paper we assess the effectiveness of the macroprudential capital buffers’ release on loans granted to households, implemented in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. We obtain causal estimates by exploring differences in the availability of regulatory buffers prior to the pandemic shock among European countries and accounting for the time-varying effect of unobservable confounding variables with the synthetic control method. We find evidence that the buffers releases contributed, on average, to mitigate the procyclicality of credit to households, specifically for house purchase and for small businesses purposes. For the aggregate household lending, we find that the average treatment effect for both the release of the CCyB and that of the SyRB were positive. However, the results suggest that, for credit associated to small businesses purposes, only the release of the CCyB had an effect.