Two European Central Bank (ECB) board members said at the weekend that the bank's interest rate cuts last week did not mark a change in its ideology and called for unemployment to be tackled with structural reforms.

"There can be no talk of an ideology change," the ECB chief economist, Mr Otmar Issing, said in an interview published in the daily Boersen Zeitung on Saturday.

The central bank on Thursday cut 50 basis points off its main money market refinancing rate, taking it to 2.5 per cent. Other reference rates were also cut markedly.

Most analysts said the larger-than-expected cuts showed the ECB was growth-oriented and employment-friendly, giving it a policy profile more reminiscent of the US Federal Reserve than of the Bundesbank.

But Mr Issing and fellow ECB board member Ms Sirkka Hamalainen insisted it was not the central bank's role to stimulate demand in the 11 euro-zone countries, some of which are struggling to maintain economic growth.

"Neither economic growth nor business confidence figure in our goal variables," Ms Hamalainen said in an interview with the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Saturday.

"The future development of prices and monetary aggregates are the two pillars of our stability-oriented monetary policy strategy," she added.

The bank said it made the cuts in the context of stable inflation at low levels and an under-control money supply, and the ECB president, Mr Wim Duisenberg, made it clear this was the end of the line for interest rate cuts.

However, the size of the cut - most analysts had been expecting 25 basis points - left many observers with a sense that the ECB had adopted a pre-emptive behaviour pattern rather like the Fed, and less like the inflation-hawkish Bundesbank.

Some, however, argued that this should be seen positively, as it gave the new central bank a distinctly different profile from the German central bank, which until now had been generally seen as a role model for the ECB.

The cuts were the first policy action since the ECB took charge of interest rates for the 11 nations which melded their currencies in the euro in January.

The ECB's goal was to provide an inflation-free economic environment in which growth could develop.

"Our contribution for employment and for an inflation-free, stable economy lies in ensuring lasting monetary stability, and that would not be had without low interest rates now," Mr Issing said.

The ECB's goals were unchanged, he added. "Price stability is the priority goal of the ECB, the Maastricht treaty is much clearer on this than the Bundesbank statute was."

Mr Issing said it was not up to the ECB to fight unemployment and that structural reforms were overdue to tackle the problem, stressing the message to governments delivered by Mr Duiesenberg that it was up to them to stimulate the economy through economic restructuring.

"It was no mere chance that we warned again that structural reforms were long overdue when explaining our move," Mr Issing said.