Open Europe in cooperation with Europolis and the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS) of Goethe University

Invites you to a conference in Frankfurt:

The role of the ECB in the crisis

Friday 11 November 2011
9am – 12.30pm

Haus am Dom
Domplatz 3
60311 Frankfurt am Main

Programme of events:

9.00am – 10.30am

“Has the ECB acted within its mandate in this crisis?”

With:

Dr. Antonio Sáinz de Vicuña
European Central Bank, General Counsel
European System of Central Banks (ESCB), Chairman of the Legal Committee (LEGCO)

Professor Dr. Markus C. Kerber
Technical University of Berlin, Professor in EU competition law, leader of the study centre Europolis Justice

11.00am – 12.30pm

“Should the ECB become the eurozone’s lender of last resort?”

With:

Dr. Ignazio Angeloni
European Central Bank, Adviser to the Executive Board
Visiting Fellow at Bruegel

Professor Dr. Helmut Siekmann
Endowed Chair of Money, Currency and Central Bank Law at the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability, Goethe University Frankfurt

Raoul Ruparel
Head of Economic Research, Open Europe

The debate will be chaired by Stefan Balling, Börsen Zeitung

Session 1 will explore the legality of the ECB’s decisions to buy government bonds on the secondary market in light of its primary mandate of price stability and independence from fiscal policy.

Session 2 will look at benefits and costs of the ECB’s actions during the eurozone crisis, including its liquidity provision for banks, its bond buying programme and its decisions on interest rates. Open Europe will present its research on the ECB, which tackles these issues, and highlights that the bank has amassed an exposure of €590bn to the PIIGS. It will also ask the question whether, moving forward, the ECB should start acting more as the lender of last resort for the eurozone.

Open Europe’s research on the ECB can be found here:

http://www.openeurope.org.uk/research/ecbandtheeuro.pdf (Research paper June 2011)

http://openeurope.org.uk/research/EUronowayout.pdf (Update October 2011)

Places are limited. If you would like to attend the conference, please RSVP to Pieter Cleppe on pieter@openeurope.org.uk or 0032 477 68 46 08

www.openeurope.org.uk