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Cartoons will teach euroyouth to love price stability
Ralph Atkins from Frankfurt
12/31/2005
The European Central Bank, which has angered eurozone politicians this month by raising interest rate for the first time in five years, is to take its anti-inflation message to Europe's schools in a campaign featuring a cartoon "euro boy" and "euro girl".
The ECB will step up its public relations efforts aimed at convincing 311m eurozone citizens of the importance of controlling price increases, in an education programme launched on December 12 across the eurozone. "It is about the importance of avoiding inflation and deflation," said one eurozone finance official.
The package includes Alex and Anna, two cartoon children who discover the virtues of price stability, and follows similar initiatives by European Union institutions in Brussels.
The two characters' appearances were being closely guarded at the ECB's Eurotower headquarters in Frankfurt and at eurozone national central banks, but one person familiar with the project described them as bright-eyed, positive and sporty-looking.
The campaign highlights the seven-year old ECB's belief that it still has work to do to win hearts and minds in the 12-country eurozone. Germany's Bundesbank, in particular, fears today's schoolchildren may take a low-inflation environment for granted - unlike their parents or grandparents, more familiar with German pre-second world war history.
Although its initiative has been long planned, the ECB has faced attacks recently from politicians who argue that the Frankfurt-based bank has exaggerated inflationary dangers and is jeopardising the eurozone's fragile economic recovery. The ECB raised its main interest rate by a quarter point on December 01 to 2.25 per cent, to check inflationary expectations.
Axel Weber, Bundesbank president, said he would have preferred a larger increase in ECB interest rates earlier this month. His comments reinforced financial markets' expectations that the ECB would lift borrowing costs again early in 2006, possibly by a half point.
Announcing this month's rise, Jean-Claude Trichet, ECB president, said: "We are responsible for price stability; 311m people are expecting us to deliver price stability. And their message is very clear: they are asking us to live up to our mandate."
The schools initiative was unveiled by central banks in capitals across the eurozone, as well as on the ECB's website in all the official EU languages.
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