Isabel Schnabel to leave ECB for senior IMF policy role in January

The European Central Bank said Thursday that Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel will step down in early January, leaving the eurozone’s top central bank about a year before her term was due to end to take one of the International Monetary Fund’s most senior policy jobs.

The ECB said on Sept. 24 that Schnabel had informed ECB President Christine Lagarde of her decision to resign, with her last day at the central bank set for Jan. 3, 2027. The bank said IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva had announced her intention to appoint Schnabel as the IMF’s financial counsellor and director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department, effective Jan. 4, 2027. Schnabel was appointed to the ECB Executive Board from Jan. 1, 2020, for an eight-year, nonrenewable term that had been due to run through Dec. 31, 2027.

The move shifts one of the ECB’s most senior officials into a top IMF policy role. Since joining the ECB’s six-member Executive Board in 2020, Schnabel has overseen market operations, research and statistics. At the IMF, the financial counsellor and head of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department oversees the Fund’s work on financial sector surveillance, monetary and macroprudential policy, capital markets and central banking issues. The post became vacant after Tobias Adrian stepped down effective Aug. 31, 2026.

Until the transition takes effect, Schnabel will remain a member of both the ECB Executive Board and the Governing Council, the rate-setting body that brings together the board and euro-area national central bank governors. The ECB said she will continue to carry out her current responsibilities through the end of her tenure.

The central bank said its Governing Council, following an opinion from the ECB’s Ethics Committee, decided that no cooling-off period is required before Schnabel takes up the IMF job. At the same time, the ECB said she will not be involved in any matters related to the IMF for the remainder of her term at the central bank.

A successor to Schnabel on the ECB Executive Board will be appointed by the European Council under the procedure laid out in the European Union treaty. The ECB did not announce a replacement on Thursday.

“Isabel has played a key role in the ECB’s determination to stabilise inflation at our 2% medium-term target and has contributed enormously to the modernisation of the ECB’s operations to meet the challenges of the 21st century,” Lagarde said in the ECB’s statement. “Her commitment to public service has been invaluable to our institution and to the people we serve in Europe.”