Merkel ally wants ECB chief to attend court hearing

A leader of Germany's Free Democrats wants the ECB president to attend a court hearing on the bank's role in the euro zone crisis, a newspaper said on Friday, but the ECB defended its plan to send someone else.

Financial daily Handelsblatt said Rainer Bruederle, a former economy minister who heads the Free Democrats' campaign for September's election, had written to ECB chief Mario Draghi asking him to appear before the June 11-12 hearing.

The report said Bruederle criticised the ECB's decision to send Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen, a German, to the hearing instead.

The Free Democrats are government allies of Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Germany's Constitutional Court will hold the public hearing on complaints about the ECB's bond-buying scheme as well as about Europe's permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism.

"With full respect for the independence of the ECB, I would like you to consider whether a personal attendance (by Mario Draghi) at the highest German court would be possible," the paper cited the letter as saying.

In October of last year, Draghi appeared before German lawmakers at the Bundestag lower house in Berlin to defend the central bank's new government bond-buying plan.

For the hearing at the court in Karlsruhe, the ECB decided, however, to send Asmussen.

"Mr. Asmussen is in charge of legal services within the ECB and in this case is the best-suited ECB representative," an ECB spokeswoman said.