Banker: Eurozone ‘unsustainable’

President of European Central Bank says zone’s future up to politicians.

FRANKFURT, GERMANY —

The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, warned Thursday that the structure of the euro currency union had become “unsustainable” and criticized political leaders who he said had been slow to respond to a regional debt crisis now well into its third year.

On the desperation scale, the plea by Draghi to European lawmakers Thursday was not on the same level as the genuflection to congressional leaders in 2008 by the U.S. Treasury secretary at the time, Henry M. Paulson Jr., who was begging them to approve a huge bank bailout.

But the note of frustration and urgency in Draghi’s voice made clear that he was aware of the problems in the eurozone that he said only the member nations’ politicians could now solve.

There have been many spikes in the eurozone’s crisis fever in the past, of course, with a bailout here or a stopgap measure there seeming to calm things for a while. But this time, Europe may have reached a moment when the currency union’s survival depends on a powerful, convincing response.

Greece, progenitor of the debt debacle, is in political turmoil once again, and this time it is in danger of dropping out of the eurozone. Spain, with one of the region’s largest economies, is in the grip of a banking crisis, and there is a growing sense that the danger to Spanish banks is of an entirely different order of magnitude from that in suffering but small Greece.

Ireland voted Thursday on whether to approve the European financing agreement between member nations.

The clearest danger signal may be the euro currency itself. It is at a two-year low against the dollar, as investors who can do so are pulling money out of the euro region.

U.S. officials are also displaying increasing concern. President Barack Obama spoke with European leaders by video conference this week and the U.S. Treasury Department dispatched a senior official, the undersecretary for international affairs, Lael Brainard, to Berlin and other European capitals to get the message across.

Draghi, in what may have been his bluntest criticism of political leaders since he took office in November, said Thursday that half-measures and delays had made the eurozone crisis worse.