The verdict on Wim Duisenberg is likely to be that he was given an impossible job to do; but he was perhaps not the best man to try to do it.

"Everybody says he is very nice, but that is not what central bankers are paid for," says Charles Wyplosz, author of reports on the European Central Bank for the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

The job of president of the ECB is impossible partly because of the structural weaknesses of the eurozone. Excessive regulation, low labour mobility and wide regional disparities contribute to a lack of economic dynamism, especially when compared with the US.

The ECB estimates that trend growth in the eurozone is between 2 and 2.5 per cent; for the US it may be 3 per cent or more.

Eurozone monetary policy is complicated, too, by the lack of a single fiscal authority. While Alan Greenspan at the US Federal Reserve or Sir Edward George at the Bank of England have only one fiscal authority with which to co-ordinate policy, the president of the ECB has 12, all making individual tax and spending decisions constrained only loosely by the EU's broad economic policy guidelines and the stability and growth pact.

The multinational character of the ECB also works to undermine the president's authority. None of the other members of the Federal Open Market Committee have Mr Greenspan's status, but 12 of Mr Duisenberg's colleagues on the ECB's council are heads of national central banks, people with great influence in their own countries who are not used to keeping their opinions to themselves.

On the whole they have been quite successful in keeping a united front and setting policy for the eurozone as a whole rather than pursuing national interests, but their prominence has inevitably compromised Mr Duisenberg's position.

As a new institution running a new currency, the ECB has also had to battle to establish its credibility, which has meant taking no risks with inflation. Many economists would argue that the ECB was too persistent in raising rates during 2000; even more would agree it was not quick enough to cut rates last year.

The ECB's decision-making is collective rather than individual, however. Although Mr Duisenberg sums up the conclusions of the council meetings and attempts to find a consensus, he bears much less personal responsibility for the ECB's decisions than Mr Greenspan does for the Fed's.

Mr Duisenberg certainly under-estimated the effect that the US slowdown would have on Europe last year. As late as March, he said there were "no convincing signs that the slowdown in the US economy is having significant and lasting spillover effects on the euro area economy." But many European politicians, especially in Germany, made similar mistakes.

The biggest criticism of Mr Duisenberg is not over the substance of his decisions, but over his presentation. His willingness to talk off the cuff and his often vivid turn of phrase have frequently raised eyebrows among other policy-makers.

He has never really built strong personal relationships with other leading central bankers around the world. Even in the days immediately following September 11, when the moves by the Fed, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the ECB to inject liquidity into the financial system and cut interest rates helped prevent a market collapse, other central banks say they did not have particularly close contact with Mr Duisenberg.

Although there is general sympathy for the difficulty of his position, some feel his career shadowing the Bundesbank's decisions as head of the Dutch central bank was no proper training for running the world's second largest economic area.

Mr Duisenberg admitted in 1998 that he would struggle to get used to the intense scrutiny of the media, but as Mr Duisenberg discovered as a central banker, what you say can often be as important as what you do.

When he implied in a newspaper interview that the bank would not intervene any further to boost the euro, leading it to fall to a fresh low, Mr Duisenberg was unrepentant.

"I am direct - some say I am too direct," Mr Duisenberg said soon after. "It is part of my character. Even if I wanted to change my character, I do not think I could."