ECB Insight: New DNB Chief Olaf Sleijpen Unlikely to Shift Dutch Voice Much

13 June 2025

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – As it is now established that Olaf Sleijpen will succeed Klaas Knot as President of De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), we have taken a closer look at Sleijpen’s record and concluded that a major shift in Dutch thinking on monetary policy at the European Central Bank is unlikely.

Knot’s second seven-year term as DNB President ends later this month, and the Dutch government — beset by political difficulties — waited until today to announce his successor.

Sleijpen is a member of DNB’s Executive Board with responsibility for monetary affairs and financial stability. In this capacity, he accompanied Knot to four ECB monetary policy meetings in 2024 and 2025, most recently in March.

In Amsterdam, Sleijpen oversees economic policy and research, financial stability, financial markets, payments, and statistics — essentially functioning as DNB’s chief economist. If that weren’t enough to qualify him to fill the oversized shoes Knot is about to leave behind, Sleijpen is also the official alternate member of the ECB Governing Council.

One might wonder why he doesn’t attend monetary policy meetings in Frankfurt more often, instead sharing that duty with both the head of DNB’s division of economic policy and research and the official responsible for the monetary policy department within that division.

However, this is simply a function of how Knot has structured representation, with participation rotated appropriately depending on agendas and meeting content. In any case, Sleijpen is Knot’s designated alternate, assumes his place whenever necessary and is always involved in internal preparation for ECB meetings. .

As for Sleijpen’s monetary policy orientation, his numerous public interventions in recent years offer limited insight into his core views.

One exception might be a blog post published on DNB’s website on 31 May 2022, titled ‘Inflation Worries.’ In it, Sleijpen wrote, ‘There is no arguing with the ECB’s mandate of 2% medium-term inflation. This is not only stated in European treaty texts, but is based on economic laws that are not up for discussion.’

He continued: ‘Economists at DNB recently demonstrated that high inflation — say more than four% — is ultimately also bad for economic growth. So in the longer term there is no trade-off between inflation and growth. And inflation particularly disadvantages the vulnerable in the economy.’

In that same blog post, Sleijpen noted that inflation had turned out to be ‘more persistent than we thought in Amsterdam and Frankfurt at the end of 2021,’ warned of the danger of a ‘very damaging” wage-price spiral, and added: ‘What we certainly do not want is for the current high inflation to become a permanent phenomenon in the medium term.’

It’s worth noting that even policy doves were sounding the alarm at that time, so Sleijpen’s remarks aligned with the prevailing mood.

He has also, on at least a couple of occasions, criticized Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) — a stance that aligns more with monetary hawks than doves.

In a speech delivered on 11 November 2020, he remarked, ‘It is not surprising that in the current strategic evaluation of the ECB, a separate work stream is devoted to monetary-budgetary interactions. But there is really no place for MMT in this.’

He has also appeared to push back against putting monetary policy too squarely at the service of facilitating the climate transition. In a speech on 21 November 2024, he stated that the central bank’s role in this transition ‘is legitimised by the fact that climate change and nature degradation directly affect the economy and financial stability.’

‘But this also indicates the limits of our involvement,’ he said. ‘Everyone has a duty in this regard, and the central bank cannot assume others’ responsibility. The primary objective of monetary policy is to maintain price stability.’

Overall, we see little reason to expect the Dutch voice in monetary policy discussions in Frankfurt to shift significantly as a result of Sleijpen’s appointment. He appears to be a product of the same institutional culture. Indeed, he earned his PhD in economics at the University of Groningen in 1999—four years after Knot received his from the same university.

From 2001 to 2004, Sleijpen worked as an adviser to Wim Duisenberg, the only Dutchman to serve as ECB President to date and a noted inflation hawk who opposed fiscal dominance and resisted using monetary policy to stimulate growth at the expense of price stability.

Sleijpen’s career at DNB dates back to 1993, meaning he also served under Knot’s immediate predecessor, Nout Wellink—another monetary hawk. Sleijpen considers Wellink a mentor and credits him, in part, with encouraging his eventual decision to pursue a doctorate.