PARIS (Reuters) - The euro zone does not face the imminent threat of falling into the dangerous downward spiral of prices known as deflation, ECB governing council member Jens Weidmann said on Thursday.
Speaking in Paris, Weidmann said that ECB purchases of sovereign debt had the potential to blur the role of the central bank and should only be used to ward of the threat of deflation.
"What we see now is not that we are going towards deflation," Weidmann, who is also head of Germany's Bundesbank, said at Paris' Sciences Po university.
He said that currently low euro zone inflation, which is fuelling market expectations that the ECB will step up its unconventional monetary stimulus at a meeting next month, was caused primarily by low energy prices, rather than by weak economic demand of the sort that can trigger deflation.