MADRIDâ€"The European Central Bank and its president, Mario Draghi, want to ensure that their voices get heard beyond the financial district of Frankfurt.
But their efforts to travel around Europe and spread their message more directly to the citizens of Europe have ended up backfiring, at least when it comes to visiting Spain, one of the countries at the center of the euro debt crisis.
Last May, the E.C.B. held one of its regular meetings in Barcelona - under the kind of police surveillance worthy of a city at war and in a convention center on the outskirts of the city, in order to shield Mr. Draghi and his fellow central bankers from any anti-austerity street protests. About 7,500 police officers were deployed around Barcelona, with helicopters hovering above, while only a few hundred students gathered in central Barcelona to protest spending cuts by the Spanish goverment in areas like health and education.
On Tuesday, Mr. Draghi was again in Spain, this time in Madrid to address lawmakers in Congress. The security was less fearsome, but the meeting was controversially held behind closed doors and without Parliament providing the usual transcript of such an official session. As a result, whatever was said inside, Mr. Draghi’s visit ended up generating more controversy because of its format than its content.
Afterward, Spain’s opposition lawmakers lambasted the president of the Spanish Parliament, Jesús Posada, for using frequency-scrambling technology to block any cellphone transmissions within the chamber during Mr. Draghi’s session, to thwart the plans of some parliamentarians who had promised that they would send Twitter messages and upload videos to keep people informed about what Mr. Draghi was saying.
Valeriano Gómez, the spokesman on the economy for lawmakers from the main opposition Socialist Party, said the restrictions surround! ing Mr. Draghi’s appearance had done “no favor to the E.C.B., nor to the prestige of our chamber.†Other left-wing lawmakers denounced the format of the event as a violation of parliamentary rules and an insult to democracy.
Mr. Draghi, meanwhile, later spoke to reporters to detail his views on Spain’s economy, while the E.C.B. also published the text of Mr. Draghi’s opening speech to Spanish lawmakers.
Asked about the lack of transparency, Mr. Draghi insisted that that he had not set the rules and would have had no problem speaking more openly before lawmakers if the Spanish Parliament had wanted. Given that videos of his session were eventually released in any case by some frustrated lawmakers, Mr. Draghi concluded that “I don’t believe anybody missed out on anything.â€
Except perhaps Mr. Posada, the president of the Spanish Cngress, who may have hoped to see Mr. Draghi showing a bit more solidarity and helping justify his communications strategy.
