Interview with Frank Elderson, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, conducted by Luke Heighton on 22 September 2023

27 September 2023

Your speech at Terschelling was something of a departure for a central banker, in that it was clearly very personal, while at the same time seeking to counter a certain pessimism regarding attempts to mitigate the effects of climate change. Are you concerned that there isn’t sufficient buy-in at the moment from, as you put it, “those who pollute, those who finance the polluters, and those who supervise the financiers of the polluters”?

Looking back at the past five years, there are many things that clearly show we are not transitioning to a zero-emission economy fast enough, with all the problems that brings economically. On the other hand, many other things are going in the right direction. My main message was that we can do this, but we need to be fast. The later the transition, the…