European Central Bank President Lagarde cites ECB’s rapid crisis actions and calls for EU Single Market and capital markets reforms in Volcker Award speech

The European Central Bank published an acceptance speech by President Christine Lagarde for the 2026 Paul A. Volcker Lifetime Achievement Award, using it to underline the importance of central bank independence and to argue that Europe’s institutional set-up can still deliver decisive policy outcomes. Lagarde presented the ECB’s 27-member Governing Council as a source of resilience, making decisions harder to influence, improving policymaking under uncertainty, and not preventing rapid action. As examples, she pointed to the launch of a €750 billion emergency asset purchase programme within days during the pandemic, a 450 basis point tightening in a little over a year during the inflation surge, and subsequent 200 basis point rate cuts as inflation stabilised at the ECB’s medium-term target. On longer-term growth, the speech described a shift in the euro area away from reliance on external demand and towards higher domestic investment, with 2026-2028 projections in which investment accounts for almost 40% of growth and adds more than €150 billion in cumulative investment. Lagarde also linked Europe’s ability to translate demand into sustained growth to supply-side reforms that reduce fragmentation in services and capital markets, citing work on options such as a “28th regime” for cross-border activity and noting that EU leaders have set June as the deadline for the first phase of the savings and investments union, with a smaller group able to proceed if all 27 Member States cannot move forward.