"The main reason for the protest is that the ECB is in the troika and the troika is responsible for the austerity policies that have pushed so many into poverty," said Ulrich Wilken, one of the organizers of the `Blockupy` protest which will take place near the ECB`s 1.3-billion-euro ($1.4 billion) headquarters.
The trio of inspectors, or troika, includes the European Commission and International Monetary Fund and monitors countries such as Greece and Cyprus that have received international bailouts.
The ECB is also influential as a provider of finance to the banks of struggling countries and has in recent weeks sanctioned a drip feed of extra emergency finance to Greece`s lenders.
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis last week criticized ECB policy towards Athens as `asphyxiating`, a criticism also made by the protest organizers.
"They are not democratically elected, yet they push governments into taking action all the time," said Wilken. "We saw this again in the manner in which they made the terms harsher for Greece to get finance after the election."
Earlier this year, the ECB stopped accepting Greek bonds as security in return for funding, when that country`s new leftist government all but abandoned its reform-for-aid pledges.
"These are the policies that they carry out from their nice new offices in Frankfurt," Wilken said.
Organizers expect 3,000 people from abroad to join the protest, with a further 7,000 coming from Germany.
More about:
