The official story from the European Central Bank is that Mr. Trichet was worried about missing a connection.
ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet is changing his plans to leave Australia and return to Europe purely because of logistics, an ECB spokesman said on Tuesday.
“The problem was that at the last minute his departure time from Australia was changed because there was some concern that he would not catch a connecting flight and therefore miss the EU summit,” spokesman Wiktor Krzyzanowski told Reuters.
Earlier on Tuesday, officials at the Reserve Bank of Australia and the ECB said Trichet was cutting short a working visit to Australia so that he could attend a special European Union summit on the economy in Brussels this Thursday.
According to the RBA and the ECB’s own website, Trichet had been scheduled to stay in Australia until Wednesday.
