16/04/2018 (Agence Europe) – In a press release on Sunday 15 April, Udo Bullmann (Germany), the chair of the S&D group of the European Parliament, expressed his group's support for the European Commission's proposal of 6 December of last year to convert the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) into a European Monetary Fund (EMF) (see EUROPE 11920). This comes as Ralph Brinkhaus, an executive of Angela Merkel's CDU/CSU party, expressed scepticism about this possibility in the German press last Thursday, and as he was preparing to present the Bundestag, the lower chamber of the German parliament, with a resolution on Tuesday 17 April, calling for the inter-governmental function to be kept in place for the ESM. “This is an ideological attack on the future of the Economic and Monetary Union and disregards the experience of the euro crisis”, said Bullmann. (LT)