EUROPEAN CENTRAL Bank officials showed no sign of bending to renewed international pressure to do more to boost the euro zone’s struggling economy.

Top ECB policymakers, attending the International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings, rebuffed the IMF’s call that the bank should cut its policy interest rate below 1 per cent and be prepared to provide more public funding to banks to reduce the risk of a new flare-up of the crisis.

“It’s a free world, we take note of this, but let me say that none of the advice of the IMF has been discussed by the governing council, in recent times at least,” ECB president Mario Draghi said.

The ECB delegation to Washington had nothing to say, at least publicly, about a fresh suggestion by US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner that the ECB had a role to play in helping European economies through tough reforms ahead. “We think we have done our task in the last months by quite a number of standard and non-standard measures we have taken,” ECB executive board member Jörg Asmussen said on the sidelines of the IMF meetings.