The absolute independence of the European Central Bank vis-à-vis the policy preventing him from speaking. Mario Draghi has openly acknowledged Thursday: "I received a few minutes ago a call from the Greek prime minister said an agreement had been reached and endorsed by the major parties," said President of the ECB at its monthly press conference in Frankfurt. Thus he was able to announce before everyone else – maybe a little too quickly, given the float that followed in Athens – the good news entrusted to him by Lucas Papademos, the former vice President of the ECB.

But, according to the principle that it is easier to comment on the affairs of others than on his own, he refused to say clearly that the ECB may decide to reduce the debt of Athens, parallel commercial banks: "We are not part of negotiations. But what we hear is that the parts are pretty close to agreement. "

"Prohibited by the European treaties"

Pressed with questions, the successor to Jean-Claude Trichet ended up giving the key to participation of the ECB program "voluntary" Burden Reduction. "If the ECB redistributes some of its profits to the Member States of the ECB … it's not on monetary financing (public debt, which is prohibited by the European treaties), "he dropped. Clearly, it confirms one of the options that have been circulating for a week: the ECB could leave the unrealized gains on its purchase of Greek bonds. Which is approximately 12 billion, knowing that the bonds were acquired on the market at a discount and would be repaid at their face value at maturity.

By hiding again behind the texts prohibiting the bailout States, Mario Draghi shows the difficulty of his task. "The time is long when monetary policy was limited to setting interest rates. Since the debt crisis, the ECB must navigate waters very political, "says economist of a major French bank.

Inflation above the 2%

Monetary field itself, new relaxations are in any case by no means excluded. "Inflation should remain above 2% during the next few months, before falling back below 2%," said Mario Draghi. He worries more than ever a dry supply of bank credit: "We are actually concerned about the slowdown in the credit."

This is why the Governing Council decided to relax the rules on eligibility of collateral (securities pledged as collateral) that commercial banks have to raise cash. These conditions are changed to "temporarily" for seven national central banks, including Bank of France. "Residential real estate loans to individuals are eligible," said a statement released Thursday afternoon in Paris, which lists the technical conditions.

On a neighbor, Mario Draghi provides that the next issue of liquidity to three years, to be held on February 29, could be done "over the range of the previous operation of this type." The banks had obtained, 22 December 2011, 489 billion and 1% over three years.

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