ECB President Lagarde leads French centrist approval rating

(Berlin = Yonhap News) Correspondent Kim Gye-yeon = A public opinion poll showed that if European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde, who recently announced her early retirement, runs for the French presidential election as rumored, she will receive the most votes from the centrist camp.

According to the results of a public opinion poll by political media outlets Politico and Cluster 17 on the 12th (local time), Lagarde recorded an approval rating of 14% when running instead of former Prime Ministers Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, who are competing in the centrist camp.

It was predicted that former Prime Minister Philippe would get 13.5% and former Prime Minister Atal would get 11%, which was less than Lagarde.

Even assuming that 18 people, including the two former prime ministers and 'judo hero' Teddy Riner, are running for office, Lagarde's approval rating was 8%, tied for third place with former prime minister Philippe, Plaspublik leader Raphael Glücksmann, and Cannes mayor David Lisnar.

However, in any combination of candidates, it was predicted that Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally (RN) and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the far-left France Unbowed (LFI) would advance to the finals in first or second place.

Five months before the presidential election, while far-right and far-left candidates are leading the way, the centrist camp is struggling to gather strength as it is divided by competition between the two leading candidates, former prime ministers Philippe and Attal.

If you look at the wide range of candidates, in addition to Philippe and Attal, there are many candidates, including the center-left Glügsmann, the liberal-right Lisnar, and Bruno Letaille, who served as interior minister in the Emmanuel Macron government. Riner also announced his candidacy on the 9th, calling himself an ‘alternative candidate’ for voters who are wary of the extreme left and extreme right.

Lagarde served as Minister of Economy and Finance from 2007 to 2011 as a member of then-President Nicolas Sarkozy's center-right ruling party, the Union for Popular Movements (UMP, predecessor to the Republican Party). Afterwards, he stayed out of the domestic political scene for 15 years as president of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the ECB.

For a while, he denied rumors of a presidential run in vague terms, but has been avoiding a direct response since making his early resignation as ECB president official at the end of last month. The day before, at the Paris Peace Forum, when asked if he still ruled out running for president, he said, "I want to regain freedom of speech and freedom to participate in issues other than monetary policy. That's what I want to do."

President Lagarde announced full-fledged political activities, including plans to publish her memoir ‘Lady First’ at the end of January next year. He set February 7th next year as the date for his resignation as ECB president, more than a month before the deadline for registering candidates for the French presidential election.