Speech by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, at the Distinguished Speakers Seminar organised by the European Economics & Financial Centre

London, 4 September 2023

We find ourselves in a world marked by substantial volatility. In recent years, a series of unprecedented crises have profoundly affected people and their everyday lives. To steer the economy through these challenging times, policymakers need to manage people’s expectations – not only about inflation, but also about climate policies, geopolitical shifts and many other areas.

In this respect, communication plays a vital role in the art of effective policymaking today, and this is especially true for central banks like the ECB. But several changes in the media landscape – from new technologies to the rising tide of fake news – have made it increasingly difficult for policymakers to “cut through” to the wider public.

In other words, just as the need for effective communication has grown, so too has the…