Former IMF boss, Christine Lagarde has assumed duty as President of the European Central Bank (ECB) on Friday. Largarde took over from Mario Draghi at the head of the central bank managing the euro, the currency of the 19-member eurozone.
Lagarde, 63-year-old, succeeds the Italian Draghi, who was
in the post for eight years and guided the European Central Bank (ECB) through
the aftermath of the global financial crisis.
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Ahead of taking office, the former French finance minister
expressed her approval for the continuation of the monetary policy pursued by
the ECB under Draghi, with ultra-low and negative interest rates, along with
asset purchases.
But she has also indicated that she will look closely into
the effects of negative rates on the banking sector, amid concerns in Germany
in particular regarding the effects on bank profitability and on personal
savings.
Attac, a protest group that focuses on taxes and tax
evasion, scheduled a protest outside ECB headquarters in Frankfurt from Friday
midday (1100 GMT).
The group is calling for the ECB to pay heed to social and
environmental criteria in its asset purchase programme.
Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion have also called
on supporters to demonstrate in Frankfurt.
Lagarde, the French Managing Director of the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) since 2011, is the second French ECB head since the bank was set up
in June 1998, with Dutch banker Wim Duisenberg as its first president up to
2003.
He was followed by France’s Jean-Claude Trichet up to 2011,
who was in turn succeeded by Draghi.
However, it was as the first woman finance minister from a Group of Seven (G7) nation that Lagarde first made her mark on global finance after being appointed to the post by former conservative French president Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007.
(dpa/NAN)