German lawmakers appealed again on Saturday to Bundesbank President Ernst Welteke to resign in a scandal over a luxury hotel bill, and complained he was tarnishing the image of the country's respected central bank.
Members of parliament from the conservative opposition to the ruling coalition kept up a drumbeat of criticism on Welteke, who has resisted government calls to quit for letting a bank pay his 7,661 euro ($9,437) hotel bill for a four-day family stay.
"Welteke must take the necessary consequences without further delay and he must stop stalling for time," Laurenz Meyer, general secretary of the Christian Democrats, told Die Welt newspaper. "This is a disaster for the Bundesbank's image."
Klaus Brandner, a deputy in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) and economic policy expert, said the government has made it abundantly clear to Welteke - who is also an SPD member - that he should step down for taking gifts from a bank that he oversees.
"We need a quick decision here," Brandner told the Kurier am Sonntag newspaper. "We cannot afford to have a stalemate in an office like this."
Dresdner Bank paid the bill for the family stay in Berlin, during which Welteke gave an address at an event it organised to mark the launch of euro notes and coins on January 1, 2002.
Welteke at first said he saw nothing wrong with others paying his costs to attend their events and only later admitted mistakes were made, amid intense political and media pressure.
Welteke has since said he was "deeply sorry" for creating the impression that he was not living up to the highest ethical standards.
He reimbursed the bank for half the bill from the Adlon Hotel himself and the Bundesbank paid the rest.
The central bank in Frankfurt, which oversees commercial banks, said on Wednesday after a long board meeting that Welteke would take leave of absence pending an investigation by public prosecutors. But it said it saw no grounds for his dismissal.
The Finance Ministry and members of parliament have called on Welteke to step down because he took favours from the bank. Extensive media coverage of the "Adlon-gate" affair comes at time when the government has cut welfare and jobless benefits, tainting the lofty reputation of the independent central bank.
"I couldn't have cared less at the time who paid for the trip," Welteke's son Hans wrote in a letter on Saturday in Der Tagesspiegel newspaper. Hans Welteke, 25, added the hotel was just 100 metres from the bank ceremony.
"If we had stayed at another hotel, my father would have needed a chauffeur."
Welteke, who earns 350,000 euros per year, is Germany's top-paid public servant. Other lawmakers said the Welteke affair showed tax laws needed to be changed.
"We should take a closer look at the tax laws that make it possible for a bank to write off costs like this," said Hans-Christian Stroebele, a member of the Greens in parliament, in an interview with Tageszeitung newspaper.
"We need a tighter definition of 'operating expense', and only allow write offs for costs relating directly to operating costs. That's hardly the case here with a family holiday for a central bank boss. Taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for that."
The government called Welteke's decision to stay in office "inappropriate" and urged him repeatedly to take the "necessary consequences" - a coded call for his resignation.
Bundesbank vice-president Juergen Stark, who steps into Welteke's role on the European Central Bank's Governing Council, has criticised the pressure from Berlin.
He said the political pressure could be seen as an attack on its independence. But he added Welteke should have conceded errors earlier.
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