BERLIN (MNI) – European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on
Wednesday managed to win support from German lawmakers for the central
bank’s recent policy decisions.
Senior lawmakers from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
center-right CDU/CSU-FDP government coalition said after the meeting
that Draghi had convincingly made the case for the ECB’s new
bond-purchasing program, the OMT.
Draghi also convinced them that the ECB will remain steadfast in
its approach to assure price stability in the Eurozone, the lawmakers
said. One lawmaker even called him “a Prussian Southern European.”
The president of the German parliament, Norbert Lammert, said in a
joint press conference with Draghi here that the talks “have contributed
very much to building confidence in the cooperation of governments,
parliaments and the ECB.”
Draghi echoed these remarks: “It’s been, as President Lammert said,
an important component of confidence-building, trust-building.”
Draghi once again reaffirmed that the ECB’s recent actions,
including the OMT, “are fully and foremost in compliance with our
mandate of delivering price stability for the whole of the euro area in
the medium term.”
Moreover, “they’re fully in compliance with our monetary
independence and they have been designed in a way not to reduce fiscal
discipline in the member countries of the euro area and especially they
are not monetary financing,” the ECB president stressed.
Draghi denied media reports that the troika of the EU Commission,
the ECB and the IMF had already decided to give Greece more time to meet
its fiscal consolidation goals.
“The [troika] review is not finished yet,” he said. “I understand
that progress is being made, but some parts need to be defined.”
–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@mni-news.com
[TOPICS: M$X$$$,MGX$$$,M$$CR$,M$$EC$,MT$$$$,M$G$$$,M$Y$$$]
