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ECB boss Lagarde

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Employees regularly have more than just positive things to say about their bosses.

However, things become particularly unpleasant for management when, in a survey, a large proportion express overall dissatisfaction with the work of the highly paid management team.

This is what happened in the case of Christine Lagarde.

Halfway through her current term in office, the French ECB President received a rather poor record of good conduct in a workforce survey available to the Reuters news agency.

According to the results, a majority of 50.6 percent of the 1,089 participants were of the opinion that overall Lagarde's performance so far has been rather poor (30.49 percent) or very poor (20.11 percent).

The survey was carried out by the central bank union IPSO.

Draghi had significantly better values

Overall, not even a quarter of the participants rated Lagarde's performance as good (12.30 percent), very good (7.99 percent) or outstanding (2.57 percent).

The former head of the International Monetary Fund has headed the European Central Bank (ECB) since the end of 2019.

The ECB recently employed more than 3,500 people at its location in Frankfurt am Main.

Members of the International and European Public Services Organization (IPSO) hold six of nine seats on the Euro Central Bank's staff council.

According to the survey, only 22.76 percent of participants agreed or strongly agreed that France's former finance minister is the right person to hold the presidency at the moment.

53.48 percent disagreed with this view.

The remaining 23.77 percent said they could not say this.

A similar IPSO survey of ECB employees in 2019, shortly before the departure of Lagarde's predecessor Mario Draghi, showed that 54.5 percent rated his presidency as "very good" or "excellent".

But even then there was plenty of criticism.

Central bank employees complained, among other things, about a lack of transparency in filling positions and a culture of favoritism.

According to the new IPSO survey, a total of 59.25 percent of 1,075 participants have little or no trust in the central bank's six-member board of directors.

This is a significant deterioration compared to a similar IPSO survey last year.

At that time it was still around 40 percent.

Multiple votes?

An ECB spokeswoman described the IPSO survey as incorrect.

The survey could have been completed several times by the same person.

The ECB had already made similar criticism in previous trade union surveys.

The spokeswoman also pointed out that around 3,000 employees always take part in the ECB's own surveys.

IPSO said it had not identified any suspicious activity.

The results painted a fair picture of the views of central bank employees.

The ECB spokeswoman also pointed out that the survey also dealt with issues for which the ECB Executive Board or the ECB Council were responsible rather than just the President alone and which also did not fall within the union's area of ​​responsibility.

Just a few months after Lagarde took office in November 2019, the ECB was confronted with the outbreak of the corona pandemic.

A sharp rise in inflation followed, something that most economists had not predicted to this extent.

The war in Ukraine and the subsequent energy crisis fueled inflation even further.

In autumn 2022 it was even more than ten percent in the euro area at times.

After an unprecedented series of ten interest rate hikes, it has now fallen to 2.9 percent in December.

However, many economists had accused the central bank of only taking countermeasures very late by raising interest rates.

The new IPSO survey did not only contain negative assessments of Lagarde.

A majority of 57.25 percent of participants found it positive that Lagarde had included the issue of environmental protection in monetary policy.

April/Reuters