‘She ticks a lot of boxes’: Will Christine Lagarde take a shot at the French presidency?

An announcement by Christine Lagarde that she will step down as president of the European Central Bank nine months early, just in time for the French presidential election, has led to speculation that she is considering a run for the Élysée Palace herself.

Without giving specifics, Lagarde said she was stepping down because she could no longer “remain neutral”.

“I want to have the freedom of speech, the freedom of expression and the freedom to engage on matters that are not monetary policy matters,” Lagarde told reporters. “I think that my voice can help, my action can help in relation to principles that are dear to my heart.”

There had been rumours for months that Lagarde might resign early and she has been tipped as a candidate to take over the leadership of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

However, the French airwaves filled with discussion of a potential Lagarde presidential run as the news filtered out.

“I hope I understood correctly that she will return to the political debate, and that she will play a role in the coming years,” the centre-right former minister Bruno Le Maire said, when asked about the idea on broadcaster LCI.

The interviewer asked him if he thought Lagarde could be a minister. “I think if she’s coming back, it’s undoubtedly because she aspires to more,” he replied. “I hope so anyway, for the sake of my country.”

When Gabriel Attal, a candidate for Macron’s Renaissance party, was asked whether Lagarde could face him in a presidential primary, he replied simply: “Why not?”

Attal, who currently polls at 5-10 per cent, is one of several centre to centre-right candidates who are struggling to stand out in the race so far.

Centre-right Le Havre mayor Édouard Philippe is another, on about 13 per cent, while conservative Bruno Retailleau hovers at about 7 per cent.

They are widely expected to eventually combine forces to give the moderate camp a chance of competing against far-right front-runner Marine Le Pen, who is on about 35 per cent, and her hard-left runner-up, Jean Luc Mélenchon, before the first-round vote in April.

Jean-Marie Colombani, a French commentator and former editor in chief of Le Monde, told French radio that Lagarde could be the figure to unite them all.

“She ticks a lot of boxes,” Colombani said. “She has an ideal profile for a camp that is desperately seeking a champion.”

France is currently under pressure from financial markets, which are spooked about its large debt, hung parliament, domestic volatility and struggle to control spending.

[ France is likely heading towards ECB support and a Marine Le Pen presidencyOpens in new window ]

Bringing in a former ECB chief to steady the ship has a precedent in Italy, where Mario Draghi was prime minister between 2021 and 2022.

Some see France’s deep fiscal troubles as crucial context to Lagarde’s resignation.

Ending her term in February rather than October allows Lagarde to be outspoken about what the country needs to do to avoid tipping into a debt crisis as candidates are laying out their campaign promises.

It also avoids the potentially awkward scenario of a having a French national at the helm of the ECB if it did need to step in to avoid a French default.

The timing of Lagarde’s resignation is seen as strategic for another reason too.

[ ECB pauses rate hikes as Lagarde announces early exitOpens in new window ]

It allows the current French government to manoeuvre a preferred candidate into one of the various ECB roles that will come up for renewal in 2027 – such as Ireland’s Philip Lane, whose term as ECB chief economist ends in May.

Negotiations to choose Lagarde’s successor as ECB chief will now begin in earnest and are sure to involve horse-trading to fill various top roles between European Union leaders.

“The transition at the helm of the ECB must now be prepared in an orderly and balanced manner, in collaboration with our European partners,” French president Emmanuel Macron wrote after Lagarde’s announcement.

Left unsaid is that the transition might not be so orderly and balanced if it happened after the election, when a populist administration could be in power in Paris.

This thinking was attacked by both Le Pen’s party and by Mélenchon, who said that an early resignation to allow Macron to negotiate the next appointment was “disrespectful to the votes of the French people”.

Pollsters have not yet tested how Lagarde might fare as a presidential candidate, but a long-running survey by Ifop suggests she is one of the most popular public figures in France.

Ifop’s October instalment of its “personalities” poll found that 44 per cent of respondents had a good or very good opinion of Lagarde, while 41 per cent had a poor or very bad opinion of her. Only her former boss, ex-prime minister Dominique de Villepin, and businessman Michel-Édouard Leclerc ranked higher.

The polling indicates that Lagarde is favoured by an older, centre-ground electorate, and is more liked by women than men.

She is approved of by 86 per cent of Conservative voters, 81 per cent of voters for the centre-left Socialist Party, and 78 per cent of supporters of Macron.

However, voters for Le Pen and Mélenchon have little time for her, and Lagarde is largely untested in electoral campaigns.

A former synchronised swimming champion, Lagarde was born in Paris to two teachers and raised in Le Havre. Her professional background is in employment law.

After joining the Paris bar, she worked her way up in the international law firm Baker McKenzie, ultimately become their Chicago-based global chairman.

While working in that role, she was drawn into politics in 2005. Little known to the French public at the time, she was appointed trade minister by then prime minister de Villepin.

Her early years as a minister were not gaffe-free. She declared that “the worst of the crisis is behind us” as the global financial crisis was just getting started in August 2007.

But she developed a significant public profile and was appointed to a series of further ministerial roles, including as economy and finance minister under conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy.

[ Could Ireland’s Philip Lane be in the running for top ECB post?Opens in new window ]

She did win an election in 2008, though a local one, becoming a municipal councillor in Paris’s 12th arrondissement. She held the role until 2011 while concurrently serving as a minister.

Lagarde was appointed that year to lead the International Monetary Fund, and steered it through a series of bailouts during the euro zone debt crisis.

A 2016 conviction by a French court for negligence for signing off on a large payout to a businessman when she was finance minister bounced off her; the court spared her any punishment or criminal record, and she denied wrongdoing.

EU leaders appointed her to head the ECB in 2019, and she defied initial doubts about a lack of economics training and experience to become broadly well-regarded as a central bank chief.

Could Lagarde now take a shot at her highest office yet?

“That would not be a good idea at all,” she told France’s La Croix newspaper when asked whether she would consider a run in September.

“There’s the question of vitality, energy and strength. There’s also an unavoidable sense of sacrifice in this type of commitment. And I’m 70 years old.”