Can A Less Boring ECB Remain Accountable?

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Can A Less Boring ECB Remain Accountable?

Publishing date: 28 September 2009
Authors: Jean Pisani-Ferry Jakob von Weizsäcker

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Through Bruegel's role on the Monetary Experts Panel for the European Parliament's Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, Bruegel scholars contributed to the Committee's meeting on 28 September. In this briefing paper for the Panel, Director Jean Pisani-Ferry and Resident Fellow Jakob von Weizsäcker point out that, in the wake of the financial crisis, the ECB will take on much more responsibility for macro-prudential supervision of the financial system. With this added responsibility, however, comes serious questions about the mechanisms in place to ensure the ECB's accountability. Previously focused almost solely on price stability, the ECB will now likely be asked to increase its discretionary decision-making, especially in dealing with financial regulation. The accompanying accountability questions, the authors say, need to be addressed proactively.

About the authors

Jean Pisani-Ferry

Jean Pisani-Ferry is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, the European think tank, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute (Washington DC). He is also a professor of economics with Sciences Po (Paris).

He sits on the supervisory board of the French Caisse des Dépôts and serves as non-executive chair of I4CE, the French institute for climate economics.

Pisani-Ferry served from 2013 to 2016 as Commissioner-General of France Stratégie, the ideas lab of the French government. In 2017, he contributed to Emmanuel Macron’s presidential bid as the Director of programme and ideas of his campaign. He was from 2005 to 2013 the Founding Director of Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank that he had contributed to create. Beforehand, he was Executive President of the French PM’s Council of Economic Analysis (2001-2002), Senior Economic Adviser to the French Minister of Finance (1997-2000), and Director of CEPII, the French institute for international economics (1992-1997).

Pisani-Ferry has taught at University Paris-Dauphine, École Polytechnique, École Centrale and the Free University of Brussels. His publications include numerous books and articles on economic policy and European policy issues. He has also been an active contributor to public debates with regular columns in Le Monde and for Project Syndicate.
Jakob von Weizsäcker

Jakob von Weizsäcker heads the department for economic policy and tourism at the Thuringian Economics Ministry in Erfurt and is a non-resident fellow at Bruegel where he was resident fellow form 2005 to 2010.

He previously worked at the World Bank in Washington (2002-2005) where he was country economist for Tajikistan and the Federal Economics Ministry in Berlin (2001-2002) where he headed the office of a junior minister. Before that, he worked for Vesta, a venture capital firm, and held research positions at the Center for Economic Studies in Munich and CIRED in Paris.