A huge Euro logo is pictured past the headquarters of the ECB in Frankfurt.

The European Central Bank will resist pressure to do more to fight the euro zone crisis when it meets in Barcelona on Thursday, holding fire despite calls to restart its bond-buying program to help austerity-hit Spain.

Financial markets are clamoring for the ECB to step up its efforts to fight the two-year crisis by buying the sovereign bonds of Spain, which is in recession and is struggling to convince some of its people of the need for further austerity.

But ECB policymakers, who will face demonstrators protesting against Spain's harsh austerity measures in the Catalonian capital, are more likely to pay homage to the country's drive to cut costs than to signal any new policy action like restarting the bond-buy program, or Securities Markets Programme (SMP).

The bank has left the plan dormant for the last seven weeks despite a rise in Spanish yields to 6 percent. A break above that, to 7 percent, is considered an unsustainable price to pay for refinancing its debt.

"I think the reactivation of the SMP will occur only at a point at which the situation has deteriorated significantly and I think the pressure would have to be greater than that we've seen in recent weeks.’’

The Daily Sun/Bangladesh/ 4th May 2012