EU Crisis: Draghi breathes relief into markets

(Vatican Radio) Investors cheered ECB President Mario Draghi on Thursday after he unveiled his new package of measures to aid struggling euro zone economies. Draghi announced the ECB will embark on a bond-buying process of Outright Monetary Transactions, or OMTs. These are designed to lower borrowing costs. But they will come with conditions for the countries affected – mainly Italy and Spain.

While Draghi was announcing the ECB's plans in Frankfurt, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was meeting Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in Madrid .

With Spain's economy in recession and unemployment at 25 percent, Rajoy is resisting more austerity and reforms to comply with terms of a bailout of up to 100 billion Euros. Germany and Brussels are pushing for further pension and tax reforms and a full monitoring programme of Spanish government finances with involvement of the IMF.

But the human toll of the crisis was also visible Thursday. As austerity measures have cut into Spain's schools and hospitals, Madrid was strewn with small paper fliers reading "Merkel, go home," and a protest was planned for later in the evening outside the European Commission Representation near the centre of the capital.