Marcel Fratzscher said the entire continent stood to lose from the backlash against the ECB’s monetary policies and the single currency could also be impacted. Mr Fratscher is head of the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin and previously worked at the eurozone’s central bank. He told the Financial Times: “Germany is sliding into a dangerous anti-Europe, anti-ECB hysteria, which threatens to damage the ECB’s credibility, the euro an ultimately all of Europe.”
His warning comes less than two weeks after Germany’s next ECB board member Isabel Schnabel called on her fellow economists to tone down their scathing analysis of the bank.
Ms Schnabel, an economics professor at the University of Bonn, predicted a blow for the euro of Germans did not take a step back to reflect.
She tweeted: “Dear fellow German economists, if you are wondering what you can do for Europe: Please help to dispel the harmful & wrong narratives about the @ecb‘s monetary policy, floating around in political and media circles.
“These threaten the euro more than many other things.”
She added: “Let me add and stress to avoid misunderstandings: Well-founded criticism and warnings concerning @ecb policy are very important and need to be addressed.”
She said the rising anti-Europe sentiment among bankers in her home country has caused her to “worry”.
Ms Schnabel has publicly defended the ECB’s monetary policies over the past few weeks.
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Analysts have compared this to anti-Europe stories carried in British newspapers during the years before the 2016 EU election.
“We need this discussion in the public, but we shouldn’t criticise the ECB on issues which aren’t true,” added Ms Schnabel.
“The narrative that the ECB is expropriating the German saver is clearly wrong.”
Her comments come after Germany’ top central banker Jens Weidmann issued an apology to Mario Draghi just weeks after his term as president of the ECB came to a close.
Mr Weidmann, president of the Bundesbank, had used a newspaper interview to accuse Mr Draghi of sucking dry the bank accounts of German savers.
Germany is by far Europe’s largest economy.
