Leadership by Default: The ECB and the Announcement of Outright Monetary Transactions

Schoeller, Magnus G. Article Leadership by Default: The ECB and the Announcement of Outright Monetary Transactions Credit and Capital Markets – Kredit und Kapital Provided in Cooperation with: Duncker & Humblot, Berlin Suggested Citation: Schoeller, Magnus G. (2018) : Leadership by Default: The ECB and the Announcement of Outright Monetary Transactions, Credit and Capital Markets – Kredit und Kapital, ISSN 2199-1235, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, Vol. 51, Iss. 1, pp. 73-91, https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/293829 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 Leadership by Default: The ECB and the Announcement of Outright Monetary Transactions Magnus G. Schoeller* Abstract Starting from the striking effect of the ECB’s announcement of Outright Monetary Transactions, this paper examines why and how the ECB emerged as a leader in fighting the Eurozone crisis. Based on a rational institutionalist approach to political leadership, the paper argues that the ECB emerged as a leader because the benefits of preserving the common currency and thus its own existence outweighed the high costs of its politicization. Against the backdrop of superior power resources, homogeneous preferences, and a low institutional constraint, the ECB provided leadership by combining two strategies– namely the provision of common knowledge and unilateral action– which provided it with a first-mover advantage. As a result, the paper argues that the ECB acted as a “leader by default” rather than a power-maximizer. Instead of engaging in a competition about political influence with member states, the ECB refrained from taking the lead as long as possible because it shied away from the high costs that were connected to it. Only once it became clear that it would not be possible to free-ride on the leadership of any other actor, the ECB finally stepped in and assumed leadership. „Leadership by Default“: Die politische (Führungs-)Rolle der EZB und die Ankündigung geldpolitischer Outright-Geschäfte Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel untersucht, wie und warum die EZB durch die Ankündigung geldpolitischer Outright-Geschäfte (OMT) die Führung im Kampf gegen die Eurokrise übernahm. Ausgehend von einem rationalistischen Verständnis politischer Führung wird argumentiert, dass die EZB erst dann Führung übernahm, als der daraus entstehende Nutzen– nämlich die Wahrung der Eurozone und somit der eigenen Raison d’Être– die hohen Kosten der damit einhergehenden Politisierung überstieg. Da die Übernahme politischer Führung im Konflikt mit der Unabhängigkeit der Währungsbehörde * Dr. Magnus G. Schoeller, Institute for European Integration Research (EIF), University of Vienna, Apostelgasse 23, 1030 Vienna, Austria, E-Mail: magnus.schoeller@univie. ac.at. The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for truly constructive and professional comments. Credit and Capital Markets, Volume 51, Issue 1, pp. 73–91 Scientific Papers OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27 74 Magnus G. Schoeller Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 steht, schreckt die EZB selbst dann vor politischer Führung zurück, wenn ihr dies individuelle Vorteile verschaffen würde. Im Eurokrisen-Management agierte sie daher als ein „leader by default“, welcher erst dann die Führung übernimmt, wenn kein anderer Akteur dafür zur Verfügung steht und die Kosten des Status quo jene politischer Führung übersteigen. Keywords: European Central Bank, Political Leadership, Economic and Monetary Union, Eurozone Crisis, European Union JEL Classification: E58, F02, F55, H12, Y8 I. Introduction In July 2012, government bond spreads in the Eurozone had reached an unprecedented height (see Figure 1 below). This happened despite all anti-crisis measures that member states (MSs) had decided on in the preceding months, and it came along with new speculations about a collapse of the Eurozone. In this situation, the President of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi announced at the Global Investment Conference in London on 26 July 2012: “Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough” (President of the ECB 2012). Following this statement, the ECB announced on 2 August 2012 that it “may undertake outright open market operations of a size adequate to reach its objective.” (ECB 2012a). As a consequence of these announcements, government bond spreads collapsed. This not only provided sudden stability to the Eurozone, but it actually suspended the crisis as it removed its most immediate trigger (Altavilla etal. 2014; De Grauwe / Ji 2015). While the announcement of the so-called “Outright Monetary Transactions” (OMT) was confirmed by the Governing Council only few days later, the technical details still needed to be elaborated in the following weeks (Interviews 13, 18, 20, 22). On 6 September 2012, the Governing Council delivered the technical features of OMT (ECB 2012b). There would be no ex-an- te quantitative limits and the purchases would be conditional on the existence of a macroeconomic adjustment programme with the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) (Altavilla etal. 2014; Lombardi / Moschella 2016). The announcement of OMT represents a policy and institutional change. It constitutes a policy change because OMT enlarge the ECB’s spectrum of policy instruments (Salines etal. 2012). At the same time, the announcement is an (informal) institutional change as the ECB has thereby become the Eurozone’s de facto lender of last resort (De Grauwe / Ji 2015). The institutional practice preceding the OMT announcement provided that the ECB could only make limited purchases of government bonds to safeguard the transmission of its monetary policy. Hence, by helping the Eurozone to preserve its common currency and to OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27 Leadership by Default 75 Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 overcome the crisis through the realization of a major policy and institutional change, the ECB provided political leadership1. However, political leadership is costly (Frohlich etal. 1971). In the case of OMT, the ECB’s costs consisted primarily in its politicization and the concomitant loss of independence (Farrell 2012). Against this background, the paper asks as to why the ECB emerged as a political leader. Moreover, it examines the strategies used by the ECB to provide leadership. This is of particular relevance because as a politically independent institution, the ECB is not supposed to use bargaining-based leadership strategies such issue-linking or coalition-building. In qualitatively analysing the OMT announcement, the paper relies on a rationalist approach to political leadership (section II.). As opposed to previous research on the political role of the ECB (e. g. Henning 2016; Torres 2013; Verdun 2017), the empirical analysis focuses on one clear-cut case only. Nonetheless, based on original data gained from semi-structured interviews, it generates generalizable knowledge on the ECB’s rationale of action and strategies (sectionIII.). The paper concludes with some general remarks on the ECB’s role, which emerge from the empirical analysis (section IV.). II. Theoretical Approach This paper takes a rational institutionalist approach to political leadership (see Schoeller 2017). Leadership is understood as a process in which an actor in a position of power uses its resources in such a way as to guide the behaviour of others towards a common goal. In the case of successful political leadership, this process results in policy and / or institutional change. As Kindleberger (1981) pointed out, it is precisely the provision of a common good that distinguishes leadership from dominance or exploitation. Accordingly, a leader’s followers (“followership”) are those who profit from the leader’s actions as a collective. This does not mean that the preferences of leader and followers are homogeneous: individual preferences about how to achieve the common good, and how to distribute the related costs, may still diverge. In line with the definition outlined above, leadership requires power resources. They can be differentiated into material (economic capabilities), institutional (procedural rights) and ideational resources (information, credibility). Moreover, a leader needs to translate her resources into strategies. One way of doing so is the provision of common knowledge (see Young 1991). Such a leader defines a problem, proposes a solution to it, and promotes this solution towards her followers. A second way of providing leadership is the use of negotiation strategies, 1 For a definition of “leadership”, see the theory section below. OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27 76 Magnus G. Schoeller Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 which serve to enable collective action outcomes that otherwise are prevented by imperfect information, high transaction costs, or free-rider dilemmas (Tallberg 2006; Young 1991). These strategies comprise agenda-management, arena-shifting and -linking, coalition-building, unilateral action, and leading by example. Leadership emerges if there is a demand for and a supply of it (Schoeller 2017; Tallberg 2006). Given that a leader serves followers as a solution to collective action problems (Young 1991), the demand for leadership increases with the status-quo costs caused by a suboptimal collective action outcome. Thus, under the condition that there is an offer of leadership, we can expect that: If the aggregate status-quo costs are high, there is a high demand for leadership, and political leadership emerges. Furthermore, leadership is costly. With regard to the supply of leadership, we can therefore expect that a utility-maximizing actor will offer leadership only if her expected benefits outweigh the costs of leading (Frohlich et al. 1971; Shepsle / Bonchek 1997). Hence, under the condition that there is a demand for leadership, the following applies: If an actor’s individual benefits of leading exceed the particular costs related to it, political leadership is offered and thus emerges. This approach, according to which a self-interested leader serves a group to reach a common goal, is close to the basic idea of hegemonic stability theory, going back to Kindleberger (1981). However, whereas hegemonic stability theory has focused on the role of states in the international economy, this approach includes also other actors such as supranational institutions. III. Empirical Analysis The launch of OMT is a leadership case par excellence. By committing “to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro” and through the ensuing announcement of OMT, the ECB did precisely what according to the above-mentioned definition a leader does: it used its power resources2 to guide the Eurozone members towards a common goal, namely the suspension of the Eurozone crisis. As highlighted in the introduction, this not only represents a policy change, but also an informal institutional change as regards the ECB’s role as a potential “lender of last resort”. 2 The ECB was able to announce OMT due to its institutional rights as the Eurozone’s issuing authority, its material capabilities (“unlimited firepower”), and the credibility it enjoys in the financial markets (see section II.4. below). OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27 Leadership by Default 77 Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 1. Methodological Note The following qualitative analysis serves as a congruence test (George / Bennett 2005) to ascertain whether the ECB’s emergence as a leader can be explained by high status quo costs in Eurozone crisis management– causing a demand for leadership– and the fact that the ECB’s benefits of leading exceeded its costs, thereby accounting for the supply of leadership. Moreover, the ECB’s use of leadership strategies will be examined. The analysis is based on 27 semi-structured interviews conducted at the ECB, the German Ministry of Finance, and the EU institutions in Brussels. In order to obtain the relevant information, the respondents were guaranteed strict confidentiality. If they agreed, the interviews were recorded. Otherwise, notes were made during and immediately after the interviews. 2. Status-Quo Costs in Eurozone Crisis Management According to the first theoretical expectation, a leader emerges if high costs of status quo create a demand for leadership.3 Status-quo costs are assessed via two proxies. First, interviewees were asked for the “perceived pressure for action” in Eurozone crisis management. Second, the relative development of government bond spreads is used as a complementary proxy, since they partly reflect the fragmentation risk in the Eurozone in case of non-action– and thus the gravity of the crisis. Most interviewees stated that the perceived pressure for action has never been as high as in spring 2010 and summer 2012. Of the 18 interviewees who answered the question concerning the most critical moment during the crisis, 10 named summer 2012. Moreover, 14 of 18 respondents (77.8 %) stated that in summer 2012, the perceived pressure for action was very high (10) or rather high (4) as compared to other periods of crisis management. The perceived costs in case of status quo consisted in the default of Italy and / or Spain and the ensuing fragmentation of the Eurozone (Interviews 6, 22). This assessment is corroborated by the development of government spreads at the time. For reasons of better distinctiveness, figure 1 shows the spreads without Greek bond yields. 3 In the case of OMT, it could be objected that no demand is needed for the ECB’s emergence as a leader because it could have announced and even launched OMT without any other actor perceiving a need for it. However, even if the ECB did so, there would be strong objections by negatively affected MSs, which would most probably bring actions against the ECB to the European Court of Justice. Without a perceived need for OMT, the ECB could not rely on its mandate to secure price stability in the Eurozone and would thus lack the legal basis for its measures. OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27 78 Magnus G. Schoeller Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 Figure 1: Government Bond Spreads Relative to German Bond Yields (excl. Greece) The figure illustrates that, alongside a second peak by the end of 2011, the spreads in the Eurozone– and thus its fragmentation risk– have never been as high as in July 2012 when Mario Draghi committed publicly to do “whatever it takes”. Especially Spanish bond yields were as high as never before during the crisis, and Italian bonds had almost reached the level they had in November 2011 when Prime Minister Berlusconi finally stepped down. Accordingly, pressure on the ECB to take decisive action increased.4 In sum, status-quo costs were extraordinarily high in summer 2012, and thus created a high demand for leadership. 4 See e. g. http: / / ww w.euractiv.com / section / euro-finance / news / speculation-rife-over- ecb-s-new-bond-buying-plan / (rev. 2017-09-14). As the ECB is not supposed to receive any instructions, there is not much evidence that MS governments directly called on the ECB to take action. Moreover, any such request by a “debtor state” would be interpreted as a sign of weakness by the markets, and thus result in self-fulfilling expectations (in terms of rising interest rates on sovereign bonds) or even purposeful speculation against this MS. However, the overwhelming public support for OMT after the announcement (e. g. http: / / ww w.euractiv.com / section / euro-finance / news / draghi-gets-ecb-backing-for- unlimited-bond-buying / rev. 2017-09-14) can be considered ex post evidence for the MSs’ demand for leadership. 0,00 1,00 2,00 3,00 4,00 5,00 6,00 2010M03 2010M04 2010M05 2010M06 2010M07 2010M08 2010M09 2010M10 2010M11 2010M12 2011M01 2011M02 2011M03 2011M04 2011M05 2011M06 2011M07 2011M08 2011M09 2011M10 2011M11 2011M12 2012M01 2012M02 2012M03 2012M04 2012M05 2012M06 2012M07 2012M08 2012M09 2012M10 2012M11 2012M12 2013M01 Belgium Spain France Italy Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Austria Slovenia Slovakia Finland Whatever it takes OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27 Leadership by Default 79 Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 3. The ECB’s Costs and Benefits of Leading According to the second theoretical expectation, a leader emerges if the expected benefits outweigh the costs of leading. Figure 2 gives an overview of the ECB’s costs and benefits of leading in the case of OMT as mentioned by the interviewees. There is one benefit of leading, namely the restoration of the ECB’s effectiveness in the transmission of its monetary policy and thus the preservation of the Eurozone (being the ECB’s raison d’être), which only by the number of mentions outweighs all costs of leading. Table 1 gives a more detailed overview of the ECB’s expected benefits of leading according to the individual interviewees. (Answers by interviewees who were particularly strongly involved in the events surrounding the announcement of OMT are printed in bold, answers by ECB officials are italicised.) The most frequently mentioned benefit of announcing OMT is the signal sent to the financial markets to stop over-reactions (self-fulfilling expectations) or even purposeful speculating against certain MS. By sending this signal, the ECB could not only restore the effectiveness of its monetary policy, but also prevent the Eurozone from falling apart. In this way, it ultimately ensured its own institutional survival. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 Benefits Costs Effectiveness/Survival Control over MS Legitimacy Moral hazard Legitimacy Political Independence Figure 2: The ECB’s Costs and Benefits of Leading by Interview Answers OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27 80 Magnus G. Schoeller Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 Table 1 The ECB’s Benefits of Leading According to Interviewees (OMT) INTERVIEW BENEFITS EFFECTIVENESS  SURVIVAL 2Effective signal not to speculate against Euro  Preserving the euro (= preserving the ECB) 5Ensuring effectiveness of own monetary policy and existence of Eurozone 11 ECB’s raison d’être is to provide effective monetary policy for Euro zone 13 Saving the euro as ‘lender of last resort’ 14 Saving the Euro; Restoring own credibility vis-à-vis financial markets due to a) conditionality (grip over MS’ fiscal policy) b) unlimited capacity of OMT 15 Own survival (euro was facing collapse) 18 Effective transmission of monetary policy 19 Restoration of the ECB’s ability to fulfil its mandate of price-stability against the background of self-fulfilling expectations in the markets 20 Signal not to speculate against euro in order to maintain pricestability (even interests for Belgian or French bonds went beyond mere reflection of ‘real’ credit risk) 21 Signal against over-reaction in markets; preventing contagion; containing redenomination risk 22 Stopping speculation against euro in the context of rising interests for Italian and Spanish bonds  avoidance of Eurozone disintegration 23 Avoidance of systemic risk and self-fulfilling equilibria 24 Ensuring stability and avoiding redenomination risk 27 ECB found itself endangered in its existence; thus it took a unilateral decision which, if any, should have been taken in ECOFIN Council instead CONTROL OVER MS 3Control over concerned MS’ fiscal policy through conditionality (Continue next page) OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27 Leadership by Default 87 Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 The second strategy employed by the ECB is that of unilateral action. According to Underdal (1994), unilateral action as a leadership strategy “is exercised whenever one moves to solve a collective problem by one’s own effort, thereby setting the pace for others to follow”. Indeed, the ECB solved the Eurozone’s most immediate problem at the time completely by its own effort and thereby bought time for MSs to reform. As a top official in the German Finance Ministry explained: the ECB took a decision which actually should have been taken in the ECONFIN Council; instead, the ECB acted unilaterally (Interview 27). An ECB official admitted and justified the ECB’s unilateral action: “There were only two alternatives: Either the ECB appearing as lender of last resort to governments or Germany moving on towards Eurobonds or Redemption Fund or something to stop the crisis” (Interview 22). Hence, by declaring to “do whatever it takes” and announcing OMT, the ECB exploited a first-mover advantage and thus modified the strategic preferences of sceptical MS governments. Although the latter were still against the activation of OMT, they strategically took a neutral or favourable position because otherwise they would have destroyed the effect of the announcement and thereby even increased their status-quo costs.8 IV. Conclusion: Leadership by Default When announcing OMT, the ECB emerged as a leader because the status-quo costs were extraordinarily high at the time and its benefits of leading outweighed the costs. In other words: in the light of an unprecedented fragmentation risk in the Eurozone, there was a great demand for decisive action and the ECB needed to ensure its own survival. Against the backdrop of its superior power resources, homogeneity of preferences, and a low institutional constraint, the ECB used the strategies of providing common knowledge and unilateral action to ensure the success of its leadership. The case of OMT bears important results for the study of leadership and the ECB. First, it sheds light on the phenomenon of “leadership by default”. Leaders by default hope that another actor takes the lead before them because they shy away from the high costs of leading. By acting as late as possible, they thus attempt to free-ride on the leadership of others (“game of chicken”). However, if no other actor steps in, they have to take the lead in order to avoid the even higher costs of status quo. Thus, leadership by default is costly, but it is driven by the fear of a status quo that would be even more costly. 8 The above-mentioned linkage between OMT and ESM programmes may have further helped securing the support of critical MS, as it grants them indirect control over when and how the ECB actually employs OMT. OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27 88 Magnus G. Schoeller Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 In the case of OMT, the ECB’s costs of leading consisted ultimately in its politicization (Farrell 2012). Therefore, the ECB waited as long as deemed possible, hoping that the MSs would finally move first. This also explains the ECB’s approach prior to the OMT announcement, namely to put pressure on the MSs to impose budget cuts, so that the ECB did not have to take the burden.9 However, in an asymmetrical game of chicken, it is the actor that has more to lose which can be expected to move first: in the event of a Eurozone collapse, MS would lose their common currency, but the ECB would cease to exist. Hence, as the deadlock among MSs in the Eurogroup persisted, the ECB finally took the lead by announcing OMT, so as to avoid the higher costs of a Eurozone break-up that would have implied its own institutional death (Interview 20, 22; Krampf 2016). Thereby the ECB became a leader by default. Second, although the ECB evidently acted as a strategic player (Henning 2016; Torres 2013), it did not engage in inter-institutional bargaining with the Council, as other supranational institutions like the European Parliament or the Commission do. The reason for this behaviour can be seen in the fact that, as opposed to European Parliament or Commission, the ECB is no power-maximizer in the classic understanding of seeking to increase its political influence. Rather, it has been pushed in a leading position that it never wanted to assume. As one ECB official put it: “In the house there is a certain unease about expanding so much the role of the ECB. I think few people are happy with the fact that the ECB had to play such an important role in crisis management. Many people are aware of the risks that comes with it. The risk of mission creep and lack of legitimacy” (Interview 18). From a normative point of view, one may indeed argue that the ECB is caught in a dilemma between input- and output legitimacy (Scharpf 1999). In an attempt to preserve the common currency (output legitimacy), the ECB has not only taken considerable influence on MS-Policies, but it has also made an essential decision about the future of the euro. 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(1991): Political Leadership and Regime Formation. On the Development of Institutions in International Society. International Organization, 45(3), pp. 281–308. Interviews Interview 1 (2014): Council of the European Union, senior official / administrator. Brussels, Belgium, 6 November. Interview 2 (2014): European Commission, senior official. Brussels, Belgium, 7 November. Interview 3 (2014): European Commission, DG ECFIN, official. Brussels, Belgium, 12 November. Interview 4 (2014): European Commission, DG ECFIN, administrator. Brussels, Belgium, 13 November. Interview 5 (2014): Permanent Representation of France. Brussels, Belgium, 13 November. Interview 6 (2014): European Commission, DG ECFIN, senior official. Brussels, Belgium, 14 November. Interview 7 (2014): European Council, senior official / assistant. Brussels, Belgium, 17 November. Interview 8 (2014): Council of the European Union, official. Brussels, Belgium, 18 November. Interview 10 (2014): Senior EU official. Brussels, Belgium, 20 November. Interview 11 (2014): Permanent Representation of the Netherlands. Brussels, Belgium, 24 November. Interview 13 (2014): Council of the European Union, senior official. Brussels, Belgium, 25 November. Interview 14 (2014): ECB official. Brussels, Belgium, 26 November. OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27 Leadership by Default 91 Credit and Capital Markets 1 / 2018 Interview 15 (2014): Council of the European Union, senior official. Brussels, Belgium, 27 November. Interview 16 (2014): European Parliament, official. Brussels, Belgium, 27 November. Interview 17 (2014): European Commission, DG ECFIN, official. Brussels, Belgium, 28 November. Interview 18 (2015): ECB, official. Frankfurt, Germany, 9 March. Interview 19 (2015): ECB, senior official. Frankfurt, Germany, 10 March. Interview 20 (2015): ECB, senior official. Frankfurt, Germany, 11 March. Interview 21 (2015): ECB, official / official / administrator. Frankfurt, Germany, 12 March. Interview 22 (2015): ECB, senior official. Frankfurt, Germany, 12 March. Interview 23 (2015): ECB, senior official. Frankfurt, Germany, 12 March. Interview 24 (2015): ECB, senior official. Frankfurt, Germany, 13 March. Interview 25 (2015): Federal Ministry of Finance, government official. Berlin, Germany, 17 March. Interview 26 (2015): Federal Ministry of Finance, government official. Berlin, Germany, 19 March. Interview 27 (2015): Federal Ministry of Finance, senior official. Berlin, Germany, 23 March. OPEN ACCESS | Licensed under CC BY 4.0 | https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/ DOI https://doi.org/10.3790/ccm.51.1.73 | Generated on 2023-01-16 13:27:27