Hello and welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me are Susanna Muncheng and Jack Smith.

We want to talk about Jens Weidman's resignation as president of the Bundesbank this morning and about the failure of the European Council yesterday to agree a joint position on the energy crisis.

Wolfgang, let's start with Ian Zewitman first.

You wrote this week about not so much about the question who is going to succeed him,

but what are we going to miss once he's gone?

Yeah, and it's for the better and the words.

I mean, he did, he did, you know, he did shape the debate, a debate in the last decade

on why it's a bad idea to have QE.

And we here vehemently disagreed with him on that point.

We thought QE was essential during the decade when the EU, you know,

when the euro area designed, you know, it slided into disinflation.

I wouldn't call it deflation, but it was certainly a period of strong disinflation

and certainly below however you defined the old ECB's inflation target.

So, you know, he was not a helpful, he was not

particularly helpful in that, in that debate, certainly not supportive of Mario Draghi.

But that said, he is one of the very few people who knows this stuff. The governing counsel

of the European Central Bank is not mostly staffed by people who are hugely experienced. They may be, they've may worked in Central

Banks for a period of time. You know, we've had Central Bankers appointed, including the

president, recently who have never worked in the Central Bank before. And, you know, it is quite

important to have some people who have at least not only the experience of

working there, but also some, you know, longer experience and having, you know, reflected on

central banking for a very long part of their professional life. And he certainly has been one

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