ECB flies solo into the storm

Published on 5 August 2011 at 13:28

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A “Euro-emergency” is afoot, headlinesLa Vanguardia the day after a press conference convened by the Governor of the European Central Bank (ECB), Jean-Claude Trichet. Meant to reassure the markets, the conference was, the paper reports, “disappointing”. Faced with the “lack of determination and unanimity” within the ECB about the sizeable debt securities of Spain and Italy — countries that now find themselves in the sights of speculators — markets have reacted negatively, and European stocks have plunged.

According to the Barcelona daily, ​​Trichet did, however, raise “a fundamental problem: the governance of the euro requires a political and institutional system that is more agile and more effective.” La Vanguardiadeplores the slow paced response of the 17 Eurozone national parliaments who still have to approve the agreements from the last EU summit, which has left the ECB “facing danger alone.” The result of this “institutional power struggle may have already had serious economic consequences”, writes the newspaper, which argues that “the EU must respond immediately to get this dangerous atmosphere of mistrust under control,” because the euro is “once more at an impasse.”

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