Eurozone banking on central solution

Can Mario Draghi, the new broom at the head of the European Central Bank, deliver on his pledge to do whatever it takes to defend the European currency from attack, asks Kyran Fitzgerald

In 2005 the architects of European financial integration appeared to have good reason to be pleased with themselves.

Unemployment had fallen across Europe; economic performance in the ‘core’ countries of the eurozone was picking up, assisted by boom conditions in the periphery; the new euro currency had strengthened against its main ‘rival’, the dollar. The sceptics had been confounded.