Lagarde: I can be more than a European

French finance minister Christine Lagarde was in India recently as part of a broad campaign to sell her IMF candidacy to the emerging economies. In a long interview after her official meetings, she sounded optimistic that the Indian government was at least open to her candidacy. She also passionately defended her ability to transcend national ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

French finance minister Christine Lagarde was in India recently as part of a broad campaign to sell her IMF candidacy to the emerging economies. In a long interview after her official meetings, she sounded optimistic that the Indian government was at least open to her candidacy. She also passionately defended her ability to transcend national and regional loyalties:

French finance minister Christine Lagarde was in India recently as part of a broad campaign to sell her IMF candidacy to the emerging economies. In a long interview after her official meetings, she sounded optimistic that the Indian government was at least open to her candidacy. She also passionately defended her ability to transcend national and regional loyalties:

Your country of origin, the region you come from should not prejudice or privilege you in any shape or form. I come to the board of the IMF as not a French national, not a European national but a person who is prepared to give energy, enthusiasm, the background and skills accumulated over the years to serve the entire constituency of the institution. As I have said very often the IMF does not belong to anyone, does not belong to the Europeans. It belongs to a 187 members and all of them have a right to be served properly and completely by whoever is the managing director….

However, my hope is that if I was selected then I can be strong enough to divorce myself from belonging to a particular zone, from being a national of such member state to being a servant of the institution, to being that very interesting link between the staff of the IMF and the executive board to serve the purpose of the IMF, which is stability and not servicing either Greece or France for that.

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

Tags: EU, Europe

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