Bundesbank Executive Board member Joachim Wuermeling has called for global rules governing digital crypto tokens in an interview with the Sunday newspaper “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung”. This was prompted by plans announced by Facebook to launch its own digital currency, which will be backed by assets such as short-term Bunds and US Treasuries.

Bundesbank Executive Board member Sabine Mauderer has dampened expectations about a possible tiering system for deposit rates, which would exclude some reserves held at the central bank from negative rates as a way of easing the burden on banks. “I wouldn’t make too much of that kind of relief,” she told the “Handelsblatt” newspaper, “nor has it been established whether there is even a monetary policy case for introducing a tiering system.”

Bundesbank Executive Board member Burkhard Balz says that Europe should be aiming to create payments solutions and platforms of its own. “Here in Europe, we need to prevent a situation from arising in which American and Chinese payment systems are all we have left to choose between,” he said in an interview with Germany’s “Handelsblatt” newspaper. 

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann takes a critical view of the agreement struck by the Italian government and the European Commission over the budget dispute. In an interview with the German newspaper “Welt am Sonntag”, he noted that the original promise to reduce the deficit is now off the table. “Looking ahead, the Commission and other governments will find it harder still to insist on sound government finances,” he argued.

Bundesbank Executive Board member Joachim Wuermeling has spoken out in favour of further advancing a European financial market union. “A further opening-up of the internal market in financial services is the only way to make the European economy less dependent on financial hubs outside the euro area in the long term”, he said in an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper.