Important news from Gilberte

Stark, one of the ECB’s most experienced policymakers, is quitting his post early in what sources say is a protest at the bank’s bond-buying programme — a plan many in his native Germany see as straying away from the ECB’s core inflation-fighting mandate and into the fiscal policy arena.”To ask more of the ECB will challenge its independence,” Stark told European lawmakers in Brussels.But he underlined the importance of finding a solution to the debt crisis, adding: “There will be incalculable consequences if Greece would leave the euro area.”The ECB’s resistance to do more to solve the crisis comes as governments in the bloc struggle to find a solution, despite coming under pressure from their G20 peers at the weekend.Germany said on Monday a summit of EU leaders next Sunday would not produce a miracle cure for the euro zone crisis, pushing down markets that have risen in the past week on expectations of a breakthrough.Stark, who said he would stay at the ECB until the end of the year, said that issuing common euro area bonds would not provide a ‘silver bullet’ to kill off the debt crisis.”Euro bonds do not offer a solution of the sovereign debt crisis and are not a viable instrument of government financing,” he said, before adding that “with progress towards political union, in the end as a result of this integration euro bonds seem to be a feasible instrument”.”But it requires a different set up, it requires the transfer of sovereignty to the supranational level,” he said.For Highlights of Stark’s comments to the European Parliament, click: