The Union institutions, bodies, offices or agencies and the governments of the Member States undertake to respect this principle and not to seek to influence the members of the decision-making bodies of the European Central Bank or of the national central banks in the performance of their tasks.” The Treaty thus establishes the obligations both for the monetary policy authorities, which cannot bend to political pressure, and for governments, which cannot exercise it.
6  Milton Friedman (1962), “Should There Be an Independent Monetary Authority?”, in Leland B. Yeager (ed.) In Search of a Monetary Constitution, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 7  See, among others, Robert Barro and David Gordon (1983), “Rules, Discretion, and Reputation in a Model of Monetary Policy”, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 101–122.