Dr. Dirk Ehnts:

I will first discuss the asset purchase programme. The ECB is independent so it can just decide to create a new programme, which has a different name and is maybe more permanent. I would say that the ECB has understood that it must continue with this indefinitely. Mario Draghi started that and his predecessor, Jean-Claude Trichet, was against it. Many of these hard money Germans left the ECB because they were frustrated. Jens Weidmann was the last one and over the past decade, three or four Germans have left.

It seems that the majority opinion inside the ECB is that the ECB will have to take care of the public finances of national governments. It is clear that the concept of debt sustainability does not apply to a nation state, so the ECB will take over this kind of responsibility even though it is not explicit in the treaties. As the European Commission cannot force the ECB to not do that then I think we are kind of safe on that side.

In terms of excluding some parts of Government spending from the public debt-to-GDP or deficit-to-GDP ratios, these kinds of discussions are going on. As an in-between, maybe they are useful. It is probably possible to do this but I am not sure. The incoming German Government also seems to be trying to get around the rules and spend lots of money next year because it still can. Maybe it can just spend some of that money also in the next couple of years but invest it in the meantime somehow. Everybody is trying to bend the rules and muddle through. That is part of the process, I guess, but it is unclear at what point we will accept that we need to change the rules more drastically.