Protester throws ECB press conference into chaos

A protester briefly threw Mario Draghi's meeting with the press into chaos on Wednesday, jumping on the podium and dumping confetti over the European Central Bank president.

The 21-year-old woman from Hamburg, Germany, shouted: "End the ECB dictatorship!" before she was wrestled to the ground by security flanking the stage.

A startled-looking Mr Draghi raised his hands to his chest, after the protester crashed the press conference as the ECB president began his opening remarks.

Femen, a feminist activist group, claimed responsibility for the protest. But the protester, who later identified herself as Josephine Witt, said via her Twitter account that she was no longer acting on behalf of the movement.

"The #confetti-attack was not a #femen protest, I'm sorry ladies. I consider myself a freelance-activist. #exfemen #ecb Free Riot!" she wrote on her Twitter account after being released by the police.

When Mr Draghi resumed speaking a few minutes after Ms Witt had been dragged off the stage while flashing a victory sign, he made clear that neither the central bank's critics nor nascent signs of economic recovery would sway policy makers from their course of action.

The fracas followed the decision by the ECB's governing council earlier in the day to keep its benchmark interest rate at a record low 0.05 per cent and its deposit facility at -0.2 per cent.

In the run-up to the meeting, a batch of better-than-expected news on the region's economy had fed speculation the eurozone's central bankers could soon trim their €1.1tn landmark quantitative easing package.

The ECB president on Wednesday played down talk of tapering the central bank's €60bn a month bond purchases just yet, comparing eurozone QE to "a marathon" which had barely began.

Eurozone central bankers started buying government bonds, alongside loans sliced and diced into mortgage-backed securities and covered bonds, in March. They intend to keep on doing so until September 2016.

Mr Draghi dismissed concerns the eurozone's central bankers would struggle to find enough government bonds to buy. "We don't see problems," he said.

The ECB's deposit rate would remain at minus 0.2 per cent, limiting the eurozone's central bankers to buying debt trading at yields higher yields.

The central bank is buying government bonds to ensure the ECB returns inflation to its target of just below 2 per cent over the next few years. At the moment, prices in the region are falling, but projections published in March by the ECB's own staff show inflation hitting 1.8 per cent by 2017.

Since then, the economic data have been better than expected, while the euro's fall against the dollar has raised the price of imports.

Both of those factors indicate the ECB should expect higher inflation when it unveils its next round of projections in June. But Mr Draghi said it was difficult to say exactly how the cheaper euro would feed through into stronger upward price pressures.

The ECB president was bullish on the region's economy, saying investment spending was likely to rebound after years of underspending. He also said the ECB's actions were starting to lower interest rates charged on loans to businesses and households in the region.

Yet despite clear signs of economic improvements, the ECB continues to face scorn. The protest comes after thousands of anti-austerity marchers from the Blockupy movement last month surrounded the central bank's €1.3bn headquarters.

An ECB official said the central bank was "investigating this brief interruption to our press conference."

Its initial findings suggested that the activist registered as journalist for a news organisation she did not represent. "Like all visitors to the ECB, she went through an identity check, metal detector and X-ray of her bag, before entering the building," the ECB said.

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation