The head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, will discuss the state of economic and currency union in the euro zone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin next Tuesday, a senior German source said on Wednesday.

The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Joerg Asmussen, Germany's executive board member at the ECB, would join the talks from the bank's side. Draghi is also due to address Germany's main industry group BDI the same day.

The Italian ECB chief has said he wants to explain his plans for rescuing the euro to German policymakers. The budget committee of Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, has invited him to do so, though no date has yet been announced.

The ECB's plans for potentially unlimited purchases of debt issued by troubled euro zone countries have stirred deep unease in Germany, where some see them as violating a taboo on the central bank financing state budgets and also fear they will fan inflation.

(Reporting by Berlin bureau)