**”**I’m not a candidate for anything, but I’m very keen that Europe is protected, that Europe is the framework within which member states operate, including France,” ECB president Christine Lagarde, who is a French national, told Euronews in an exclusive interview.
Lagarde said she is monitoring the campaign ahead of a vote due April 2027, hoping that “reason will always prevail and that France will appreciate, whoever is the leader of France that it is one key member of Europe.”
“Europe is the only playground with which member states, nations and even France can actually play a significant role,” she added, in an interview with The Europe Conversation.
Her comments came in the wake of new developments in the French presidential election. On Tuesday, France’s National Rally leader Marine Le Pen said she still intended to run for president in 2027 despite a Paris appeals court upholding a conviction linked to embezzlement of EU funds in relation to European parliament jobs.
Despite the convictions, she was cleared to run but must wear an electronic tag. Le Pen has a long track record of criticising the European institutions for their supranational powers and has instead advocated for a return to a Europe of nations.
Her party sits with Patriots for Europe, a far-right group in the European Parliament in Brussels, founded by former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
On the other end of the political spectrum, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise) has also declared his intention to run.
A second-round run-off between Mélenchon and Le Pen is seen as a plausible scenario in the 2027 presidential ballot, forcing a choice between two parties seen as falling outside of the pro-EU consensus. For their part, they suggest the status quo has failed.
Lagarde, in a current position as head of the ECB, is bound by political neutrality but when asked if such scenario could pose an “existential” threat to France, and more broadly to Europe’s political and economic stability, she said she hoped “the democratic process will continue” adding that “in politics, the next eight months is eternity.”
Of the candidates so far, pro-European centrists such as Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal are currently the leading counterweights to Le Pen, but they poll behind.
Before serving as ECB chief and before that as IMF managing director, Lagarde headed the French Finance Ministry under former president Nicolas Sarkozy, becoming the first woman to lead a G7 economy and guiding France through the 2008 financial crisis.
Lagarde told French media last week that a strong European voice must be heard in the pivotal election and did not rule out leaving the ECB before October 2027, when her term would expire, when asked. The hot phase of the campaign will start early next year.
Lagarde’s future is being closely watched in Brussels, as her appointment was part of a package deal that also brought Ursula von der Leyen to the helm of the European Commission. The agreement created a balance of power between France and Germany.
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