The 2023 report by Johan Van Overtveld (ECR, Belgian) on the European Central Bank (ECB) was adopted by the European Parliament on Tuesday 27 February by 418 votes to 157 with 42 abstentions. All the amendments were rejected, with the exception of amendments 1 and 11.
In amendment 1, Sven Simon (EPP, German), on behalf of his group, expressed concern at reports of political bias within the ECB with regard to the “greening of policies”. Politico reported on 14 February that Franck Elderson, a member of the Executive Board, had said internally that he no longer wanted staff who did not share the ECB’s green objectives.
In a debate the previous day (see EUROPE 13358/14), ECB President Christine Lagarde said that Mr Elderson’s words had gone a little further than the passion behind them. The President stated that diversity and inclusion remained important to the ECB.
Ms Lagarde reaffirmed the primacy of the objective of price stability, while stressing that, without prejudice to the primary mandate, the ECB could pursue secondary objectives (see EUROPE 13357/10). She explained that climate change had to be taken into account by the ECB, particularly in its risk assessment and macroeconomic analyses.
Amendment 11, tabled by Sandra Pereira (The Left, Portuguese) and João Pimenta Lopes (The Left, Portuguese), consists of adding a recital to the report stressing that the ten consecutive rate rises had “particularly harmful” consequences “on the solvency of households, micro-businesses and SMEs in countries where variable interest rate models predominate”.
Christine Lagarde had indicated the day before that inflation was disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable and that interest rates were the ECB’s primary monetary policy tool for combating inflation, in addition to portfolio management.
Link to the report: https://aeur.eu/f/b1i (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)