ECB chief Mario Draghi calls for euro 'growth compact' In France, the leading presidential candidate Francois Hollande has called for a re-negotiation of the fiscal compact to include growth measures. Fiscal consolidation was "unavoidable" if governments were going to regain market confidence, Mr Draghi said. We are just in the middle of the river that we are crossing. The only answer to this is to persevere and for the ECB to create an environment that is as favourable for this as possible. At the same time, the central bank chief complained that the cheap funds the ECB has pumped into the banking system in recent months was not feeding through into the real economy as rapidly as hoped. "We had hoped the LTRO money would go faster into the real economy," he said. In two separate long-term refinancing operations, or LTROs, in December and February, the ECB pumped more than one trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) into eurozone banks in a bid to avert a dangerous credit crunch. The money was made available to banks at rock-bottom interest rates in the hope they would lend it on to households and businesses, thereby keeping the eurozone economy up and running. But available data so far appear to suggest that lending activity remains low and the banks are even tending to park the cash on deposit at the central bank rather than take the risk of loaning it out. Mr Draghi insisted the process would take some time. Of course, this does not mean that this will by itself boost lending to firms and households," he said. There is also evidence to suggest that banks may have used the money to buy up the sovereign debt of debt-wracked countries, a practice the ECB would strictly speaking be opposed to, since it would be an indirect form of so-called "monetary financing," or central bank financing of governments, which is banned under the ECB's statutes.