As the biggest member state of the eurozone, Germany will claim its right to replace outgoing ECB Executive Board member Sabine Lautenschläger with its own candidate, a spokeswoman for the Federal Finance Ministry told S&P Global Market Intelligence on Sept. 26.
The European Central Bank said Sept. 25 that Lautenschläger will step down as a member of the central bank's Executive Board and Governing Council on Oct. 31, long before the scheduled end of her term in January 2022.
The ECB did not provide a reason for Lautenschläger's resignation. Following the announcement, market observers have pointed out her lack of support for further monetary policy easing by the ECB.
"Sabine Lautenschläger has been the most vocal and often the only member of the Executive Board to publicly criticize the ECB's bond purchases," Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING Germany, said in a note Sept. 25.
"It seems that disagreement about the course of monetary policy was a key reason [for the resignation]," ABN AMRO head of financial markets research Nick Kounis and senior economist Aline Schuiling said in a note Sept. 26.
In an August interview with financial news website Market News, Lautenschläger said that based on current economic data it was "much too early" for a new stimulus package, which should be introduced when a risk of deflation emerges.
Germany will put forward a candidate for the job soon, finance ministry spokeswoman Katja Novak said in an emailed statement, without specifying when this would happen.
Potential candidates named so far include Isabel Schnabel, a finance professor at the University of Bonn and a member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's council of economic advisers, and Bundesbank Vice President Claudia Buch, according to ABN AMRO's Kounis and Schuiling. Elga Bartsch, head of macro research at BlackRock Inc., has also surfaced as a potential successor, they said.
