Germany fires cannon shot across Europe's bows

There is widespread concerns in Germany that ECB intervention in the Italian and Spanish bond markets mark a dangerous escalation Photo: Bloomberg News


German President Christian Wulff has accused the European Central Bank of violating its treaty mandate with the mass purchase of southern European bonds.


By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in Lindau, Germany
6:58PM BST 24 Aug 2011


In a cannon shot across Europe’s bows, he warned that Germany is reaching bailout exhaustion and cannot allow its own democracy to be undermined by EU mayhem.

“I regard the huge buy-up of bonds of individual states by the ECB as legally and politically questionable. Article 123 of the Treaty on the EU’s workings prohibits the ECB from directly purchasing debt instruments, in order to safeguard the central bank’s independence,” he said.

“This prohibition only makes sense if those responsible do not get around it by making substantial purchases on the secondary market,” he said, speaking at a forum of half the world’s Nobel economists on Lake Constance to review the errors of the profession over recent years.

Mr Wulff said the ECB had gone “way beyond the bounds of their mandate” by purchasing €110bn (£96.6bn) of bonds, echoing widespread concerns in Germany that ECB intervention in the Italian and Spanish bond markets this month mark a dangerous escalation.

He did not explain what else the ECB could have done once the bond spreads of these two big economies began to spiral out of control in early August, posing an imminent threat to monetary union and Europe’s financial system.
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