The European Central Bank Boss Mario Draghi has outlined bond-buying plans to support struggling eurozone countries and said “the euro is irreversible”.

ECB president Mario Draghi, speaking at a regular media conference, discussed the plans to help crisis-wracked eurozone countries.

Bond buys would be linked to a “strict and effective” European rescue programme, he said.

Mr Draghi described the purchases by a new term, outright monetary transactions (OMT).

He said: “A necessary condition for outright monetary transactions is strict and effective conditionality attached to an appropriate European financial stability facility (EFSF) and European stability mechanism (ESM) programme.

“Such programmes can take the form of a full EFSF/ESM macroeconomic adjustment plan or the precautionary programme called enhanced conditions credit line (ECCL), provided that they include the possibility of primary market purchases by the EFSF and possibly later the ESM.”

The ECB will consider OMT “to the extent that they are warranted from a monetary perspective” and as long as conditionality is respected.

Purchases would be focused on “the shorter part of the yield curve” especially those between one and three years.

“Under appropriate conditions we will have a fully effective backstop… We are strictly within our mandate to maintain price stability over the medium term,” Mr Draghi said.

He added: “We aim to preserve the singleness of our monetary policy.

“The euro is irreversible.”

But the ECB’s decision to buy bonds of eurozone states with sky-high borrowing costs was not unanimous and one of the bank’s governing council had a “dissenting view”, Mr Draghi revealed.

“It was not unanimous… there was one dissenting view,” Mr Draghi said.

He added: “I will leave you to guess who that was”.

The hint came amid reports that Germany’s central bank chief had expressed reservations about the bond-buying programme.

Mr Draghi’s media conference came after the ECB decided to keep its benchmark interest rate at 0.75% for the eurozone.

Earlier in the day the Bank of England similarly kept bank base rate at the UK historic low of 0.5%.

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