President Christine Lagarde is considered unfit to lead the European Central Bank by the majority of employeesaccording to a POLITICO article.

In a survey by the ECB’s staff union, most respondents said they did not think she was the right person to lead the ECB now, with 50.6 percent of respondents ranking her overall performance in the first half of her eight-year term term as “very poor” or “poor”.

This is in stark contrast to the good reviews her predecessors received Mario Draghi and Jean Claude Trichet in similar surveys at the end of their term. Fewer than one in 10 rated Draghi as “very poor” or “poor”, while 55 percent rated his performance “very good” or “excellent”. Only 14.5 percent of respondents described Trichet’s tenure as “very poor” or “poor.”

Comments to the survey, which was answered by 1,159 people out of around 4,500 ECB staff, echoed the displeasure, even saying that Lagarde “got too deep into politics and is using the ECB to further her personal agenda, which has not helped her reputation central bank”.

“Mario Draghi was there for the ECB while the ECB seems to be there for Christine Lagarde,” one staffer wrote.

An ECB spokesman called the investigation flawed, saying “the President and the Governing Council are fully focused on their mission and have implemented policies to respond to unprecedented events in recent years, such as the pandemic and wars,” he said.

The ECB said it receives feedback from staff through regular surveys conducted in accordance with professional standards and that these typically draw around 3,000 responses.

Lack of target

Only 38% of respondents expressed support for monetary policy decisions made under Lagarde, with the remainder split between those who disapproved and those who did not express an opinion. By contrast, Draghi enjoyed a 64% approval rating at the end of his term.

It is noted that Lagarde faced some of the most difficult challenges, including the global pandemic and the war in Ukraine that combined to create a historic rise in inflation around the world.

Worryingly, more than half of those surveyed said they were worried the ECB would not be able to achieve the return to price stability it had promised. At 2.9% in December, eurozone inflation is well off the peak of 10.6%, but remains well above the 2% target.

In this environment, the ECB should focus on its primary objective of reducing inflation, the staff said.

“The ECB has focused on issues beyond its remit at a time when inflation has been at the highest level in EU history,” a staff member said. In addition to frequent interventions on issues such as gender equality, several cited the ECB’s decision to take part in the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas as an example, while others claimed excessive travel for purposes unrelated to the ECB’s core business .

Despite the discontent, there was clear support for Lagarde in some quarters. The majority supported her decision to include environmental protection in the ECB’s actions, one of the defining initiatives of her presidency.

Lagarde may not be surprised that she scored worse on monetary policy than Draghi, who is credited with single-handedly saving the euro, but what she may find shocking is that she also scored much worse than Draghi and Trichet on internal issues, including her flagship issues of promoting diversity and inclusive decision-making.

Both of her predecessors also received poor marks for their handling of domestic affairs.