US President Donald Trump criticised statements made by European Central Bank (ECB) head Mario Draghi, noting that his remarks “immediately dropped the Euro against the Dollar”; according to Trump, this results in unfair competition.

The US leader’s remark comes after last week Thierry Mariani, a National Rally MEP, stated that the EU and Russia do not need any contracts to carry out most transactions in euros; he added that any move “that will put an end to the hegemony of the dollar is a positive thing”.

In addition, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the US dollar as a “tool for the issuing country to put pressure on the rest of the world” during a speech at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

© Sputnik / Alexey Nikolsky

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia June 7, 2019

Earlier, numerous Russian media outlets cited Russian Finance Minister spokesperson Anton Siluanov as saying that he and Maros Sefcovic, vice-president of the European Commission for the Energy Union, had agreed to set up a working group that will take care of a transition to using the euro and rouble in bilateral payments.

The EU has reportedly been implementing measures to strengthen the euro as a global reserve currency and challenge the dollar in international transactions. The issue of national currencies came back into the limelight amid European efforts to save the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran after the US unilaterally pulled out of the accord in May 2018.