The president of the European Central Bank ordered the seizure of the mobile phones of her fellow governors during a meeting that took place last week, before the meeting that led to the decision on Thursday to increase the ECB’s key rates by 25 points basics. The objective of this seizure was to prevent anyone from causing a leak of information before a monetary policy decision was announced, according to information provided by two sources to the Reuters agency.
The news agency claims that this seizure was made before Wednesday’s meeting at which a new leader was appointed for the sensitive area of banking supervision. An official ECB source declined to comment on the information.
According to Reuters, this unprecedented action is the boldest by Christine Lagarde with the aim of avoiding information leaks from the council of governors, a situation that has marked her mandate at the head of the ECB, as had already happened with her predecessor, Mario Draghi.
According to sources consulted by Reuters, the 26 members of the ECB, including Mário Centeno, were asked to hand over their mobile phones on Wednesday, when they were preparing to choose between the German Claudia Birch and the Spanish Margarita Delgado, who will lead the supervision department. The devices were returned after Birch was appointed chairman of the ECB’s Supervisory Board, the body that oversees the health of Europe’s largest banks. Claudia Birch is vice president of the Bundesbank and obtained the position of deputy governor of the Bank of Spain.
This precaution was taken because in 2018 the election of the current president, Andrea Enria, appeared in the media before his appointment was announced. Reuters recalls that a few days before the decisive meeting on interest rates, it revealed an inflation forecast in the euro zone, which was one of the factors that led the ECB to maintain the path of raising interest rates.
The ECB raises interest rates (with Centeno voting against). Rates May No Longer Go Up, But They Won’t Go Down Any Time Soon
On Thursday, the president of the ECB announced a new rate increase, contradicting some expectations and analyzes that even admitted a brake on the increases. It is known that this new increase did not have the consensus of all the governors, despite the “solid majority” to which Lagarde refers. Mário Centeno is one of the central bankers who has publicly called for caution in the path of increasing interest rates.
Centeno maintains that the ECB should be prudent when deciding on a new rate hike
Source: Observadora
