PARIS-Eu­ro­pean Cen­tral Bank Pres­i­dent Mario Draghi has de­liv­ered a roadmap for res­cu­ing the eu­ro zone from po­ten­tial melt­down, but the onus is now on Spain to swal­low its pride and ap­ply for help to bring down crip­pling bor­row­ing costs. Draghi met or ex­ceed­ed mar­ket ex­pec­ta­tions by an­nounc­ing on Thurs­day that the Eu­ro­pean Cen­tral Bank (ECB) was ready to buy un­lim­it­ed amounts of bonds of up to three-year ma­tu­ri­ty of coun­tries that re­quest a Eu­ro­pean bailout and ful­fill strict pol­i­cy con­di­tions.

The Ital­ian ECB chief as­sert­ed his au­thor­i­ty by iso­lat­ing dis­sent from Ger­many's Bun­des­bank, which pub­licly crit­i­cised the de­ci­sion, while main­tain­ing pres­sure on eu­ro zone gov­ern­ments to pur­sue bud­get dis­ci­pline and eco­nom­ic re­forms.

Reuters