Pressure mounts on ECB after investors judge EU summit a failure

PRESSURE mounted yesterday for the European Central Bank to intervene more decisively after financial markets judged that yet another EU summit had failed to resolve the eurozone’s debt crisis.

But Germany’s powerful central bank chief JensWeidmann, an influential voice in the ECB, made clear his opposition to ramping up the ECB’s purchases of eurozone government bonds. He also said the Bundesbank would only provide fresh funds for the IMF eurozone fund if non European countries did also.

There was also growing doubt about the ability to have an intergovernmental fiscal compact involving all 17 eurozone countries and up to nine others as opposition grew in Sweden — a non eurozone country — and the Netherlands, which uses the currency.