By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (EconoStream) – European Central Bank Governing Council member François Villeroy de Galhau on Monday welcomed the victory of Joseph Biden in the U.S. presidential election as ‘good news’.

In an interview with French commercial radio network RTL, Villeroy, who heads the Bank of France, said that one of the conditions to successfully navigate the current crisis was that the high level of uncertainty diminish.

‘I’m going to be very precise’, he said. ‘It’s the international economic uncertainties, and here there is in fact good news: the election of Mr. Biden this weekend.’

‘The United States should become more predictable and contribute to the reduction of uncertainties that weigh very negatively in this crisis’, he elaborated.

Asked by the interviewer to confirm that this was thus good news for him, Villeroy responded: ‘This is good news. We’re already going to see it in the atmosphere. And then, we’ll see the degree of cooperation of the United States.’

Europe must nevertheless assert itself, and cannot expect everything from the U.S., he said.

Villeroy noted that French companies assessed the effect of the latest pandemic confinement measures as being only about a third as damaging as those taken during the first wave. ‘This shows … that we have learned collectively to work while protecting the employees,’ he said.

The Bank of France had not issued a forecast for French growth in the fourth quarter because of the uncertainty about the extent and duration of public health measures, he said. However, whereas the French central bank had expected a recession for all of 2020 of ‘a little less than 9%’ before the second wave of the pandemic, ‘[t]oday we think that over the whole of the year 2020, we will be between minus 9 and minus 10%.'

He declined to endorse the view of the European Commission, which in issuing updated macroeconomic forecasts last week had said that ‘[d][espite the recovery, France’s real GDP at the end of 2022 is forecast to be 0.5% lower than at the end of 2019.’

Villeroy countered that ‘it is too early to say, there are many uncertainties…’ In mid-December the Bank of France would issue forecasts from which ‘we will deduce when we can expect to return to 100%, to normal’, he said.