FRANKFURT — The president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, warned Thursday that the structure of the euro currency union has become ‘‘unsustainable’’ and criticized political leaders who he said have been slow to respond to a regional debt crisis now well into its third year.
On the desperation scale, the plea by Draghi to European lawmakers Thursday was not on the same level as the genuflection to congressional leaders in 2008 by the US Treasury chief at the time, Henry M. Paulson Jr., who begged them to approve a huge bank bailout.
However, the note of urgency in Draghi’s voice made clear that he was aware of the problems in the eurozone that he said only the member nations’ politicians could now solve.
Draghi, in what may have been his bluntest criticism of political leaders since he took office in November, said Thursday that half-measures and delays had made the eurozone crisis worse. He said the leaders needed to decide what kind of eurozone they wanted, and fast.
“Dispel this fog,’’ he said Thursday.
Draghi underscored differences between the European and US financial systems that might explain why the United States was able to recover from its crisis by the end of 2009, while Europe’s has no end in sight.
In some ways, Draghi may be the single most powerful figure in the eurozone drama, as head of the only institution with both huge financial resources and an ability to make decisions without a laborious political process.
Government leaders, wary of the political cost, have looked time and again to the ECB to deliver relief. But Draghi said Thursday that the crisis now demands solutions that could come only from political leaders — such as the creation of a Europe-wide bank deposit insurance program.
Such a system, like deposit insurance in the United States, would reassure bank customers that their money was equally safe in any eurozone country, and that might prevent the sort of money flight that is now sapping Spain.
He also backed calls by European Commission leaders on Wednesday for a more unified banking system. But only the lawmakers of the eurozone countries could together create such a deposit insurance system.
‘‘From the ECB’s perspective, the next iteration of crisis management largely falls on the shoulders of member states,’’ said Mujtaba Rahman, a eurozone analyst at Eurasia Group. ‘‘Arguably, all the incremental plays have been exhausted.’’
As deposits continue to flow out of Greece and Spain and fears of a bank run rise, Draghi underscored the ECB’s determination to make sure that solvent banks do not fail because they are temporarily short of funds.
‘‘The ECB will continue lending to solvent banks,’’ Draghi told a committee of the European Parliament. ‘‘We will avoid bank runs by solvent banks.’’