ECB Insight: Who Might Surprise? Dark Horse Contenders to Succeed Lagarde

27 June 2025

ECB Insight: Who Might Surprise? Dark Horse Contenders to Succeed Lagarde

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – In a series that kicked off on Monday with European Central Bank Governing Council member and Bank of Finland Governor Olli Rehn, we are looking at some of the well-known policymakers regarded as potential ECB Executive Board candidates.

That series will continue on coming Monday, when we turn to Rehn’s colleague, De Nederlandsche Bank Governor Klaas Knot. Today, however, we consider who might emerge more unexpectedly—not just for any Board seat, but for the top spot when President Christine Lagarde leaves at the end of October 2027.

All the possible ‘dark horses’ we identified had to meet a range of criteria we established for purposes of our list. These criteria overlap somewhat with the formal requirements of Article 283(2) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which demands that Board members be ‘persons of recognised standing and professional experience in monetary or banking matters’.

Realistically, however, the Treaty is far from defining the only conditions a candidate who stands any chance of success must meet. Our list of criteria follows:

  • Nationality: Though not explicitly addressed in Article 283(2), euro area nationality is a de facto requirement. One can discuss what this would mean for a potential candidate like Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a national of Bulgaria, which is expected to adopt the euro next year. For present purposes, we disregard her. We also discount the idea of conferring euro area nationality solely to make an otherwise superb candidate eligible; Europe will not need to resort to such a device. Finally, in terms of nationality, we are sceptical that Italy or France will again send one of theirs to Frankfurt. This leads us to discount former Italian Finance Minister Roberto Gualtieri and former French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, among others.
  • Age: All past ECB presidents were of an age upon taking office between 60 years, 10 months (Jean-Claude Trichet) and 64 years, 2 months (Mario Draghi). Given the demanding nature of the job, we assume it is unlikely that anyone older than around 67 at the time of Lagarde’s departure would get the nod. We thus eliminate Pierre Gramegna, managing director of the European Stability Mechanism, who will be 69.5 years old when she goes. We reluctantly omit even Portugal’s Vitor Gaspar, Director of the Fiscal Affairs Department at the IMF, as he will be just nine days short of 67. We are more flexible at the lower bound, but think it improbable that anyone under 50 will have amassed a track record warranting serious consideration.
  • Excellent English: In 2025, it might seem unnecessary to specify this, but there are substantial differences in English-language skills even among generally well-qualified candidates. This could tip the scales, though we have not in fact excluded anyone on this basis.
  • No prior Executive Board appointment: Opinions on the subject vary, but our view is that any previous such appointment, full term served or not, renders a person ineligible for any subsequent Board stint. Most notably, this rules out Benoit Coeuré, who, if not for his previous Board mandate, would be an outstanding candidate (though an objection to him would still be his citizenship, as noted above). We exclude the possibility of the non-renewability rule being formally changed.
  • International stature: This is a bit tricky, but we would argue that being the finance minister of a relatively large country effectively confers international stature that such an official’s counterpart from, say, Estonia or Portugal might lack. Ideally, however, a candidate would have occupied a genuinely international position, such as Lagarde at the IMF. In the end, there is a good deal of flexibility here; the winner does not have to be a household name in the broadest sense. Nonetheless, we rejected Spanish First Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister María Jesús Montero, whose entire career has been oriented domestically and for whom we were unable to find evidence of any English-language proficiency.
  • Recent high-level fiscal/financial policymaking experience. Here we were flexible enough to include Bruegel head Jeromin Zettelmeyer, whose qualifications in many ways are ideal, but had to rule out Ifo Institute president Clemens Fuest, former Bruegel director Guntram Wolff, and OECD chief economist Álvaro Santos Pereira. The same criterion rendered former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta a non-starter.
  • No going from a private financial institution directly to the ECB: By this we mean that we don’t think the next ECB president will be someone who, immediately prior to the appointment, was with a private bank. This presented an issue with respect to European Commissioner Maria Luís Albuquerque, who for some years up to last September worked for a private financial institution. We don’t exclude her, given the three years separating that activity and the end of Lagarde’s term of office, but it does not help her chances. Only Mario Draghi had worked for a private bank relatively recently, but six years elapsed before his ECB appointment, during which he led the Bank of Italy.
  • No sustained recent period of low visibility: This excludes people like former Dutch Finance Minister and Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who has been mayor of his hometown of Eindhoven (population ca. 250,000) for the last three years.

In short, whoever is chosen—whether from our list, a standard name, or someone we overlooked—the choice to lead the ECB should not leave observers baffled. With that in mind, the following individuals strike us as the most plausible dark horses (ages as of 1 November 2027, the presumptive start of the next ECB presidency):

  • Nadia Calviño (Spain, 59 – President of the European Investment Bank since January 2024, Chair of the International Monetary and Financial Committee of the International Monetary Fund since December 2021, high-level Spanish government positions repeatedly, including as minister of economy)
  • Valdis Dombrovskis (Latvia, 56 – European Commission vice president since 2014 with various portfolios of an economic nature, previously in EU and domestic politics, prime minister from 2009-2014, earlier chief economist of the monetary policy department of Latvia’s central bank)
  • Jeromin Zettelmeyer (Germany, 63 – Director of Bruegel economic policy think tank since September 2022, previously deputy director of the Strategy and Policy Review Department of the IMF, director-general for economic policy at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (2014-16) and director of research and deputy chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2008-2014). Zettelmeyer is the only one of our group with a Ph.D., which he earned at MIT’s economics department—a point in his favour
  • Paschal Donohoe (Ireland, 53 – Alternately Irish minister of finance or public expenditure since 2016, president of the Eurogroup since 2020)
  • Maria Luís Albuquerque (Portugal, 60 – European Commissioner for Financial Services and the Savings and Investments Union since end-2024, previously in the private sector but earlier in various high-level Portuguese government posts, including minister of state and finance from 2013-2015)

Leaving aside the question of whom they would face among the conventional candidates, we assess that Calviño and Dombrovskis, in that order, have distinctly higher chances than the other dark horses, though in terms of academic credentials, Zettelmeyer is head and shoulders above the rest.

In any case, none of this is to say that the next ECB president has to be one of them or some other dark horse not listed here. The powers that be may suddenly decide to turn to the ranks of academia to fill the role. Or, of course, Lagarde’s successor could be one of the ‘standard’ choices we discuss elsewhere.

As of now, we suspect the latter scenario to materialise, given the number of well-qualified candidates already in the public eye as such. That our best efforts yielded such a short list of dark horses reinforces this view. And perhaps importantly, the selection of at least two of those on our list would mean bypassing compatriots of theirs who would be even more obvious candidates.

In the case of Calviño (Spanish), we are thinking of course of former ECB Governing Council member and Banco de España Governor Pablo Hernández de Cos, who is about to become General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements. We will discuss the potential for him (and others) to return to the ECB soon.

Similarly, the less likely choice of Zettelmeyer (German) would imply snubbing ECB Governing Council member and Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel as well as Chair of the ECB Supervisory Board and former Bundesbank Vice President Claudia Buch.

But then again, dark horses appear unexpectedly.