AppointmentsBrief
ECB's Lagarde tells Governing Council she will step down on 7 February 2027
The ECB gave no reason and named no successor; the European Council appoints one under Article 283, as the Governing Council held rates the same day.
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European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde has told the Governing Council and European Council President António Costa that she will step down on 7 February 2027, the bank said in a press release on 29 October.
The release is three sentences of news. It states no reason for the decision and names no candidate to succeed her. On the process, it says her successor will be appointed by the European Council following the nomination process outlined in Article 283 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, and it points readers to a page on the consilium.europa.eu site. It gives no timetable for a nomination. The Governing Council thanked her warmly and gave her a long standing ovation, the ECB said.
Her departure date falls just over three months after the announcement.
The news came on the day of the Governing Council's rate meeting. In its monetary policy decisions of 29 October, the Council kept the deposit facility, main refinancing operations and marginal lending facility rates unchanged at 2.50 per cent, 2.65 per cent and 2.90 per cent. It said energy prices had continued to rise, posing upside risks to the inflation outlook and downside risks to growth, and that financing conditions had tightened since its previous meeting. It committed to stabilising inflation at its 2 per cent target in the medium term, will follow a data-dependent and meeting-by-meeting approach, and is not pre-committing to a particular rate path.
For euro funding, the two documents together set out what is fixed and what is open. The policy rates are unchanged as of 29 October, and the Council said it is not pre-committing to a particular rate path. The identity of the next president, and the date of the nomination, are not in the ECB's release.
The change matters beyond Frankfurt because the Governing Council includes central bankers from the region this site covers. The Governing Council consists of the six members of the Executive Board plus the governors of the national central banks of the euro area countries. The ECB's list, dated 10 September 2026, includes Dimitar Radev, Governor of the Bulgarian National Bank, and Ante Žigman, Governor of Hrvatska narodna banka. The ECB's euro area page shows Bulgaria using the euro since 2026 and Croatia since 2023, so both governors sit on the Governing Council, where governors take turns to hold voting rights. The same page lists Hungary, the Czech Republic and Denmark among EU members not using the euro, so their central banks set policy independently, as the Magyar Nemzeti Bank did when it held its base rate at 5.5 per cent on 20 October.
For the US side of the rate picture, see our report on the Fed minutes covering the Federal Reserve. Lagarde remains president until 7 February 2027, and the ECB's release says nothing on how the Governing Council will operate in the interval.