–Adds Comments By Econ Min Bruederle To Story Sent Sunday 18:45 EDT

BERLIN (MNI) – The German government has given up its plan that a
German should become the next president of the European Central Bank,
the weekly Der Spiegel reported over the weekend.

Bundesbank president Axel Weber declared on Friday he would step
down in April of this year, prior to the end of his term in April 2012,
and would no longer be a candidate for the ECB top job when incumbent
Jean-Claude Trichet retires this autumn.

“Weber was our only candidate [for the ECB presidency], that’s it
now,” said a German government member cited by Der Spiegel.

Economics Minister Rainer Bruederle was quoted on Monday by German
daily Bild Zeitung as saying that the nationality of the next ECB
president “doesn’t play a decisive role.”

Rather, it is crucial that he assure stable prices, Bruederle told
Bild. “It is above all decisive that the candidate for the job of the
ECB head have the correct inner convictions: he must be convinced that
inflation doesn’t solve any problems and that we absolutely need stable
prices to get growth,” the minister stressed.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had already said on Friday that
“Germany has never declared that it insists on a German candidate.”

Meanwhile, Germany’s former finance minister, Peer Steinbrueck,
over the weekend rejected suggestions from his party, the center-left
opposition Social Democrats, that he could run for the ECB presidency.

“I am not available for this job,” the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung
quoted Steinbrueck as saying.

However, it was highly unlikely anyway that Chancellor Angela
Merkel’s center-right government would have backed Steinbrueck, who has
no experience in central banking.

Der Spiegel reported that Jens Weidmann, Merkel’s 42-year-old top
economic advisor, is to take Weber’s job in the Bundesbank. However, he
might first serve a short while as an ordinary Bundesbank board member
before assuming the presidency of the central bank, the magazine wrote.

Weber told Der Spiegel in an interview published over the weekend
that Weidmann “is an excellent economist.”

The outgoing Bundesbank president explained that he had given up
his candidacy for the ECB presidency because he was isolated on the ECB
Governing Council in his opposition to the central bank’s program of
purchasing government bonds.

“The [ECB] president has a special position. But if he represents a
minority opinion on important questions, then the credibility of this
office suffers,” Weber explained.

Weber, a declared hawk on the Governing Council, said he does not
expect his resignation to change the course of monetary policy in the
Eurozone.

“The ECB Governing Council vehemently stands up for a
stability-orientated monetary policy and I have no doubt that this
stability orientation of the ECB and the Bundesbank will also continue
under my successor,” Weber stressed.

–Berlin bureau: +49-30-22 62 05 80; email: twidder@marketnews.com

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