BERLIN (MktNews) - The chairwoman of the EU Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, Christa Randzio-Plath, has urged the ECB to cut interest rates at its meeting this week and called for ECB President Wim Duisenberg to stay on "given the legal problems of his designated successor, Jean-Claude Trichet.
"How many basis points (eurozone interest rates) will be lowered is not decisive. The direction is important. Anything which influences economic sentiment positively "must be tried," Randzio-Plath told German business weekly Focus-Money, according to an advance copy of an interview due to be published on Thursday. The ECB's policy making Governing Council is widely expected to cut rates at its meeting Thu"rsday. The ECB's last rate move was a 50-basis-point cut to 2.75% on December 5 last year.
Randzio-Plath -- who is a member of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democratic Party -- also urged ECB President Wim Duisenberg to stay i"n office beyond his planned July 9 retirement date. "Personal integrity is elementary for an ECB head," she said. Duisenberg's designated successor, Bank of France Governor Jean-Claude Trichet, currently is on trial for complicity in doctoring" the accounts of then state-owned Credit Lyonnais bank in 1992. Duisenberg has said numerous times that he would be willing to stay on longer if it helped in the transition to a new president. //www.marketnews.com