ECB staff feel Lagarde not right person to lead central bank
Reuters – The trade union representing European Central Bank staff said a majority of employees think Christine Lagarde is not the right person to lead the institution, according to a survey it conducted.
The survey by the International and European Public Services Organisation (IPSO) showed staff trust in the ECB’s entire senior management team was lower than a year ago, with nearly 60% expressing a negative view.
Run to coincide with the middle of Lagarde’s eight-year term as president and released on Monday, the union’s survey showed ECB employees were mostly concerned with matters such as pay and working conditions.
However, IPSO said around half of those who responded expressed some doubts about Lagarde’s track record on fighting inflation, the ECB’s primary objective.
Lagarde and other ECB policymakers have had to grapple with a sharp surge in prices fuelled in part by the war in Ukraine and its impact on energy prices - a spike also unforeseen by many other central banks and economists.
An ECB spokesperson said the survey was flawed, and included topics “for which the Executive Board or Governing Council rather than solely the President is responsible and that are not within IPSO’s remit”.
The ECB said its president and board “were fully focussed on their mandate and have implemented policies to respond to unprecedented events in recent years such as the pandemic and wars”.
Organisational gripes were a constant of IPSO surveys under Lagarde’s two immediate predecessors Mario Draghi and Jean-Claude Trichet, but the pair received positive assessments by staff of their performance as central bankers.
IPSO said nearly 64% of the survey’s roughly 1,100 respondents thought Lagarde had not improved the ECB’s reputation, without specifying further.
In farewell surveys run about Draghi and Trichet, more than 70% thought they had improved the bank’s reputation despite objections about other issues. IPSO did not conduct mid-term surveys of the pair.
Of the three ECB presidents, only Lagarde has had to deal with a period of sustained global inflation, which has hurt the living standards of workers, including those at the ECB.
The ECB employs more than 3,500 people, opens new tab who have elected IPSO representatives to six out of nine seats on the bank’s staff committee.