ECB governing council member, Ignacio Visco, wants more transparency in the ECB voting process as part of a better way to handle dissent
Visco spoke to the FT and stresses the need for the ECB to come up with a plan in its upcoming strategy review in order to avoid the kind of backlash suffered at the end of Mario Draghi's tenure over the past few months.
He argued that:
"In this strategic review we also have to decide how we should try to accept dissent. We have to learn how to manifest it. I think we should aim for transparency as much as possible and if that means making clear the dissent and different positions of the members, personally I don't have much to say against it."
The full report can be found here.
For some background, the ECB very seldom conducts votes on monetary policy and they never reveal the position/stance taken up by members during the meeting - though you can get a rough idea based on their respective policy remarks.
Most of the time any decision reached by the governing council is by consensus or what Draghi usually frames as "unanimous", which we all know is not always the case.
The issue with things being more transparent - especially when it comes to votes and policy stance - is that ECB members may come under more scrutiny and added pressure from their own nation; considering that they are usually the respective central bank head.
It'll be interesting to see if they can find the right balance to resolve this issue in the near future. But if Lagarde does not act steadfast to bridge the divide, we can expect the ECB to not reach any form of united decision-making for quite some time to come.
