The chief central bankers of Germany and the Netherlands have criticized the European Central Bank’s “quantitative easing” policy, voicing concern that “easy money” will discourage less competitive euro states from enacting liberal economic reforms.

The Financial Times reports that Jens Weidmann, head of the Bundesbank, has cautioned that cheap government financing could convince politicians in France and Italy that further reforms are unnecessary:

If the member states get used to such financing conditions, it could lead to a lessening of their motivation for further consolidation or reform measures.

Fear of deflation

Weidmann’s warning came only days after the ECB’s Mario Draghi launched a €1.1 trillion bond-buying scheme designed to boost growth and stave off the prospect of deflation.

Inflation has been below the 2-percent target since the European sovereign debt crisis began in 2008.

Discipline

Weidmann’s Dutch counterpart, Klaas Knot, was more explicit, warning “there will be no market discipline or very little market discipline” on governments that continue to spend more than they raise in revenue:

This means that budgetary rules have become even more important to safeguard discipline in government budgeting.

Yet earlier this month, the European Commission gave Belgium, France and Italy reprieve from the bloc’s budget rules, allowing them to post deficits in excess of the 3-percent treaty limit — provided they reform.

Rules

Knot pointed out that France has broken the budget rules for eleven of the past sixteen years.

“For each individual year, you can come up with an explanation about an extraordinary recession or circumstances,” he said. But if exceptions are made almost every year, it “undermines support for the European project.”

France did introduce liberalizations last month, but corporate taxes and the cost of doing business remain higher in the country than in most.

Critical media

Dutch and German media were critical when Draghi first announced the quantitative easing program in January.

De Telegraaf, the Netherlands’ largest newspaper, praised Knot at the time for joining his counterparts from Austria, Germany and Estonia in voting against the program.

Germany’s conservative Die Welt warned that Germans were losing confidence in the central bank. Handelsblatt likened Draghi’s stimulus to a “drug” and the tabloid Bild asked, “Is the ECB banker destroying our money?”

Unlike Draghi, the Germans — still haunted by the experience of hyperinflation in the 1920s — do not see falling prices as a problem. Weidmann argued it was only a “temporary” phenomenon. It would have been better to see it out the fall in oil prices, he said.