The German professor of financial economics Isabel Schnabel has been nominated by the German cabinet as a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB). According to Reuters news agency, which is based on government sources, the economics professor at the University of Bonn succeeds Sabine Lautenschläger at the central bank in Frankfurt.
Lautenschläger previously announced that he would resign from 31 October as ECB director. This means she leaves well before the end of her term. It was known that Lautenschläger was not in favor of resuming the ECB’s buy-back program. She was rather critical of the generous monetary policy of ECB president Mario Draghi.
Schnabel (48) has been working as an economic adviser to the Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government since 2014. If she became a member of the six-membered ECB board, she would be the second wife, alongside the new ECB president Christine Lagarde. As the largest economy in the eurozone, Germany is usually given a place in the ECB’s governance.