2024-01-22 16:54:00
The union that represents the employees of the European Central Bank says that most of them do not believe that the current president of the institution, Christine Lagarde, is the right person to lead the most important bank in Europe, reports Archyde.com.
Christine LagardeFoto: Imago Stock And People / Profimedia Images
A survey published on Monday by the IPSO (International and European Public Services Organization) union shows that the confidence of ECB employees in the management of the institution is lower than a year ago, with almost 60% of those surveyed expressing a negative view of it.
The poll, conducted to coincide with the halfway point of Lagarde’s eight-year term as ECB head, shows that most ECB staff are mainly concerned regarding topics such as pay levels and working conditions.
But IPSO says more than half of those polled expressed some doubt regarding Lagarde’s track record in tackling inflation, the ECB’s main objective.
Last September the ECB raised benchmark interest rates for the euro zone to the highest level since the single currency was adopted in 1999, a move to bring inflation back under control following it soared in many European countries due to the problems caused by of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Lagarde was appointed to lead the ECB without experience as a central banker
Around 53.5% of those who took part in the IPSO survey said they thought Lagarde, a former head of the IMF, was not the right ECB president at the moment. Only 22.8% rated it positively, while 23.8% were undecided.
IPSO pointed out that this is the first time that ECB staff have come to such a conclusion regarding the bank’s leader. Although he was managing director of the IMF from 2011 to 2019 and before that held several portfolios in the French government, including economy and finance, Lagarde had no experience as a central banker at the time of her appointment to head the ECB in 2019 .
Employee grievances were also a constant during the mandates of Lagarde’s predecessors, Mario Draghi and Jean-Claude Trichet, but the two were always positively evaluated by them in terms of their performance at the head of the institution.
However, only Lagarde faced during her term a period of persistent high inflation at the global level, a situation that also affected the standard of living of ECB employees.
The ECB and union representatives are arguing over the polls
An ECB spokesman said on Monday that the IPSO survey was “flawed” and that it included questions regarding topics that the ECB’s Board of Directors or Governing Council is responsible for, not just the bank’s president.
But the survey also showed that 59% of respondents rated their trust in the ECB Governing Council as “non-existent” or “low”, compared to 40% last year.
On the other hand, ECB management says that IPSO allowed the same person to fill out questionnaires for the survey more than once, a criticism of other previous surveys by the union.
The ECB spokesperson recalled the institution’s own surveys, stating that an average of 3,000 employees out of a total of approximately 3,500 responded to them.
In one of these internal surveys by the ECB, almost 83% of respondents said in 2022 that they were “proud” of their workplace, while another 72% said they would recommend it to others.
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