ECB Leaders. A New European Monetary Elite?

Abstract

The members of the Governing Council are often described as belonging to different factions. Some are ‘doves,’ others are ‘hawks.’ To which faction do you belong?

As chairman of the ECB, I am talking on behalf of the Governing Council. It is an excessive simplification for summing up the positions of the various members of the Council that way. We have a thoroughly closeknit Goveming Council; the entity making the decisions in the ECB is the Governing Council, properly speaking, and not a fraction thereof. Each of us is responsible for the stability of the whole eurozone, and none of us represents any particular lobby, any particular economy or notion whatever it may be. Moreover, I consider that collective wisdom is fundamental and, de facto, each of us integrates others’ wisdom and views and reserves the right to change his approach according to this interaction. As a chairman, I see to it that the Governing Council fulfils his mandate as inscribed in the treaty price stability. (Inverview Jean-Claude Trichet, 2006).¹ The councils of the central banks include hawks and doves, such has always been and will always be the case. Two of the worst hawks of the Governing Council of the ECB are Jürgen Stark, a member of the executive board, in charge of monetary policy, and Axel Weber, the chairman of the Bundesbank.