Christine Lagarde at the bedside of the European economy

The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, once again put on her outfit as a firefighter for the European economy which is threatening to collapse. 

Growth is expected to collapse between -5% and -12% in the euro zone, which is unprecedented since the Second World War. But faced with such a disaster, synonymous with social breakdown, unemployment, bankruptcy, who can act? In principle, it is above all the States. They did it very well with emergency measures. Of which act. But what is expected of them now is stimulus to get the European economy back on its feet.

This was the subject of the last European Council. Bad luck, the governments do not agree on anything, the countries of the North and those of the South confront each other. This means that the democratically elected governments of the euro zone do not have a common strategy to face the coming crisis. 

And so they rely on the European Central Bank.

In other words, on an institution certainly very powerful but technical, not elected. And who spends his time playing firefighters while waiting for politicians to make decisions. Fortunately, he is a very powerful firefighter. The ECB, chaired by Christine Lagarde, announced Thursday that it would increase its support for banks, that it would support debt-bearing states, that it would intervene by all means so that they continue to benefit from interest rates of very low interest. She is in her role as a firefighter and she is efficient. So much the better.

But it is not the firefighter who reconstructs the building: it is the role of governments. What is lacking today in Europe is a plan to rebuild our economies to avoid a devastating social crisis. And that, the ECB cannot do it in place of elected governments.