Dr. Jürgen Stark is regarded as a monetary policy hardliner who, as Chief Economist of the European Central Bank, is vehemently committed to the stability of the euro in the debt crisis. At the end of 2011, he left the ECB in protest against the fiscal policy of the EU states in the euro crisis.
After studying economics at the Universities of Hohenheim and Tübingen, Jürgen Stark (*1948) worked as a consultant in the Economic Policy Department at the German Federal Ministry of Economics. He then heads the “Foreign Trade, Money, Currency and Financial Markets” department in the Federal Chancellery before becoming head of the “National Monetary Policy, Capital Market Policy, Germany as a Financial Center and Borrowing” subdivision in the Federal Ministry of Finance. His career then took him to the Federal Ministry of Finance as head of the department “International Monetary and Financial Relations, Financial Relations of the European Community” before he was appointed its State Secretary from 1995 to 1998, in which capacity he played a major role in bringing about the Euro Stability Pact.
Jürgen Stark Lecture Topics
- Global economic & financial policy
- The world without order – The changed world of central banks
- “NextGenerationEU” – The next generation must pay
- Pandemic, Lockdown, Ukraine: The new global world order and its consequences
- Unconventional Monetary Policy: From Crisis Mode to Normality?
In 1998, Stark moves to the Bundesbank and, during two terms of office (until 2006), is not only its vice president but also a member of the Executive Board and deputy to the president of the Deutsche Bundesbank on the European Central Bank Council. At the end of his second term, the economist moves to the Executive Board of the European Central Bank. As Otmar Issing’s successor, he is responsible for the Economics Division.
In the fall of 2011, the convinced stability policy expert announced his resignation as Chief Economist of the ECB at the end of the year. His departure was in protest at the practice of massively buying up government bonds of crisis states during the debt crisis. Stark uncompromisingly defends his goal of ensuring the stability of the euro.
Jürgen Stark is an honorary professor at Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen and a member of the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Board of Trustees.