The ECB must show its critics now

Since the euro crisis, the European Central Bank (ECB) has been accused of not being able to raise interest rates because countries like Italy and Spain would not be able to cope. For a long time it was difficult to prove the opposite. In view of the years of extremely low inflation rates in the euro area, interest rate hikes were out of the question.

That has changed drastically. The ECB must seize the opportunity and show its critics now that it is capable of acting. Because despite the sharp rise in national debt, the countries of southern Europe are more resilient than is often assumed. You have used the long period of low interest rates to take out long-term debt on good terms.

It would therefore take a long time before higher capital market interest rates had an impact on debt servicing. For a country like Italy, where the public debt is 150 percent of economic output, that makes a huge difference.