Mario Draghi has warned of the costs of a eurozone break-up, breaching a taboo for a president of the European Central Bank, even as he sought to play down market expectations about the ECB’s role in combating the sovereign debt crisis.

Mr Draghi’s willingness to discuss a scenario for Europe’s 13-year-old monetary union that his predecessor, Jean-Claude Trichet, simply described as “absurd,” highlights the high stakes in the eurozone debt crisis, which has rattled global financial markets.

In his first interview since becoming ECB president on November 1, Mr Draghi said that struggling eurozone countries that quit the currency bloc would face still greater economic pain. For remaining members, European Union law would have been broken and “you never know how it ends really”, he said.