ECB executive board member Benoît Cœuré on Saturday told an audience at Harvard University in the US that a central bank can "buy time for political bodies to act" - but that European governments now have to redefine the social contract "to safeguard the sustainability of Europe's social economy model".

Cœuré said he believes the management of the current crisis in the eurozone "is at least as much about social stabilisation as it is about economic stabilisation", and isolated three elements