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HARDtalk: Otmar Issing - European Central Bank Board, 1998 - 2006

01/10/2012

Otmar Issing - European Central Bank Board, 1998 - 2006

BBC News Channel - HARDtalk, Otmar Issing - European Central Bank Board, 1998 - 2006

Can the euro be saved? Otmar Issing, former adviser to Angela Merkel, gives his views.

Can the euro be saved? Otmar Issing, one of Europe's most influential economic voices, fears that measures to defend it could risk destroying the currency and Europe's union too.

Can the euro be saved? Europe's leaders think so; its central bank says there is no limit to the money it is prepared to spend to defend it. But is their solution in danger of destroying not just a currency but Europe's union, too? Otmar Issing fears so. As one of the most senior officials when the European Central Bank was founded, he helped bring the euro into being. Until this year he advised Germany's Angela Merkel, and he remains one of Europe's most influential economic voices. When the euro was being planned, Otmar Issing believed that political union was essential. Now he fears that centralising power in Brussels and Frankfurt and sharing financial risk could provoke a public backlash that would wreck both the currency and the continent.

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