By Jorge Valero and Kamil Kowalcze | Updated on Oct 08, 2026 at 06:39 PM
Nominations to succeed European Central Bank official Isabel Schnabel must be submitted by the end of the month as President Christine Lagarde’s future there remains shrouded in mystery.
Euro-zone finance ministers meeting in Luxembourg agreed to set a deadline for applications on Oct. 28, Eurogroup President Kyriakos Pierrakakis said on Thursday, adding that “hopefully the selection will happen at the November meeting.”
That schedule, confirming an earlier Bloomberg story, doesn’t touch on the possibility of a successor to Lagarde also being agreed upon.
“We’re opening up a selection process for a single position with a specific time frame,” Pierrakakis said.
His boss, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, recently predicted a prospective “ grand bargain ” on that job along with two other impending ECB positions. Schnabel’s exit in January coincides with the speculated early departure of Lagarde and the end of Chief Economist Philip Lane’s term in May.
The ECB president has given numerous hints about leaving prematurely, most recently in an interview with a French newspaper last week where she aired the possibility of quitting “ a few months ” before her stint concludes next October.
Schnabel’s shift to the International Monetary Fund has created an impetus for decision-making among governments. While Italian Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti last Friday called on Lagarde to clarify her plans, the central banker has offered no further clues on how long she intends to stay on.
Since Schnabel is from Europe’s biggest economy, her exit essentially puts the ball in Berlin’s court to propose a successor and keep that country’s seat on the ECB’s six-member Executive Board.
“It is clear that Germany will continue to play an important and influential role within the central bank — I will also make that clear to my European colleagues,” German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil told reporters earlier on Thursday. “We will then make the personnel decision, and the proposals, within the federal government and will jointly put forward a proposal.”
Potential German candidates include professors Markus Brunnermeier of Princeton University, Ulrike Malmendier of Berkeley University, and Tobias Adrian, who just exited the job Schnabel will take at the IMF. Former Finance Minister Joerg Kukies could also be a potential nominee.
European Union leaders have the last word on any appointment. Given Schnabel’s position will be vacant as of early January, a decision by the final summit of the year in December is plausible.