Jürgen Stark

Jürgen Stark served on the ECB's executive board from 2006 to 2011 as the bank's chief economist, representing the German conservative view on price stability and ECB mandate limitations. He resigned in September 2011 in protest against the ECB's Securities Markets Programme (SMP) — the first sovereign bond buying program — arguing it blurred the line between monetary and fiscal policy. His resignation signaled deep internal ECB divisions on unconventional monetary policy that would intensify through Mario Draghi's later "whatever it takes" announcement. Before the ECB, Stark served as Deputy President of the Deutsche Bundesbank and as State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Finance, giving him deep experience across both central banking and fiscal policy. He studied economics in Germany and has been a consistent public intellectual in the debate about the limits of ECB authority under European treaties. His departure in 2011 — alongside Axel Weber's resignation from the Bundesbank earlier that year — signaled a significant German withdrawal from ECB leadership, reflecting the profound disagreements over the appropriate response to the eurozone sovereign debt crisis. He continued writing about ECB governance after his departure.