A survey of staff at the European Central Bank found that a majority rated Christine Lagarde’s overall performance as President as “very poor” or “poor” – with some believing her implementation of diversity efforts to be “adversarial and discriminatory”.
The survey of officials in the ECB by the bank’s trade union, the International and European Public Services Organisation (Ipso), found that almost three-quarters expressed unhappiness about her approach to management.
Responses seen by Politico, included scathing comments including contrasts to predecessors. “Mario Draghi was there for the ECB while the ECB seems to be there for Christine Lagarde,” one staff member wrote.
“Lagarde is generally reported as being an autocratic leader. Many respondents resent the negative atmosphere that this leadership style has instilled in the institution,” Ipso concluded in a report on the survey.
“Many also stated that she spends too much time on topics unrelated to monetary policy and goes too frequently into the political domain. Respondents also report their perception that she is misusing the resources of the institution to further her own personal image, possibly to prepare her next career move,” the representative body also said.
The findings revealed “unhappiness over Lagarde’s role in prioritising gender diversity and environmental policies at a time when the eurozone is grappling with inflation,” The Times reported.
“A ‘woke’ atmosphere is being created at the ECB, which will prove highly detrimental when people start realising what a dead end this is,” one official told the survey in the comments section.
Some 1,159 of the ECB’s 4,500 staff took part in the survey, which was a measure of attitudes towards Lagarde at the midpoint of her presidency which she will hold until November 2027.
The ECB sets monetary policies for the 20 members of the European Union’s single currency, but some staff too much time was spent on other issues as inflation soared.
“The ECB has been focusing on topics beyond its mandate in a period where inflation was at the highest level in the EU history,” one staff member told the survey.
Perhaps the most significant finding of the survey was that only 38% of ECB staff backed the monetary policy decisions taken by bank chief’s under Lagarde and more than half expressed fears that the ECB would fail to deliver on its core price stability and inflation targets.
“In a sign of growing disillusionment among ECB staff, almost 60 per cent of those surveyed by Ipso said they had low or no trust at all in Lagarde and the executive board, which was up from just over 40 per cent a year ago,” the Financial Times reported.
Just over half of respondents said they did not support Lagarde’s call for wage moderation and a similar proportion said they were “worried that inflation might not be back on track as expected”.
However, there was more support for her push to take account of climate change in ECB decisions, which just over 57 per cent said they approved of.
Lagarde has also emphasised a push to improve gender diversity in the central bank. But more than half of staff surveyed said they did not support her approach to gender targets.