Dr. Dirk Ehnts:

I thank the Deputy for his question. It is a very difficult one to answer because you only walk into a river once and when you walk in again it has changed. When we look back at the economic crisis, the euro crisis, the problem was that the ECB was not providing support. In a way the political problem was that the ECB was not open to pressure because it was an independent body. If it was part of the European Union back then. it had very little contact with other bodies of the European Union. It would have been politically very difficult to get the ECB to create asset purchase programmes. I would argue right now that if we could go back in time, I would try to persuade people that the ECB can and should back up the national governments and make sure their liquidity and solvency is guaranteed by purchasing as many government bonds as necessary. Perhaps it is not necessary to purchase them at all because just announcing that kind of programme works. That type of solidarity mechanism would not cost a single euro. If we were to have an eurozone crisis, another financial crisis in the eurozone, I think it would be would be handled in a different way. The last time it was a complete disaster, even from the German perspective. Ireland was forced to nationalise its banks and that was a bad call, a bad decision. I know the letter the ECB wrote to the Irish Government and the social hardship it created, but that is the past. There is no talk about austerity right now. With the Covid crisis, everything was okay. They completely changed the rule book. The deficit targets were cut out. The Stability and Growth Pact was deactivated. The ECB created the very big purchase programme. The European Commission seems to have learned this kind of policy response is very harmful. That is my perspective. As a German, I feel very sorry about the role of German politicians back then, but I am halfway optimistic that this will not happen again.