International News

FRANKFURT, (APP/AFP): An unusually public
spat between European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble looks set to hang heavy over a key meeting of ECB policy makers Thursday.
Six weeks after the ECB announced a new raft of measures aimed at pushing chronically weak inflation in the euro area back up to economically healthier levels, Draghi faces increasingly hostile criticism in Europe’s biggest economy over the possible need for still further action.
“Germany is the ECB’s main problem at the moment,” a source close to the central bank told AFP.
Last month the ECB cut interest rates, beefed up its controversial asset purchase programme known as quantitative easing and made vast amounts of cheap loans available to banks.
But analysts seemed sceptical about the central bank introducing further measures at Thursday’s policy-setting governing council meeting.
“Any new measures would be more surprising than Albania winning this year’s European soccer championship,” joked ING DiBa economist Carsten Brzeski.