Christine Lagarde is leaving the European Central Bank early, in February, and the Netherlands wants the job. On Wednesday the government nominated Klaas Knot, 59, who ran De Nederlandsche Bank from 2011 to 2025, to succeed her. If he gets it, he would be the second Dutch president of the ECB, after Wim Duisenberg, who led it from 1998 to 2003.
Prime minister Rob Jetten is confident: “for a lot of European countries, he will be a perfect fit,” he told Bloomberg. The main rival is Pablo Hernández de Cos, the former governor of the Bank of Spain. Countries can put names forward until today; finance ministers meet on Monday, and a decision is expected by mid-December. The winner needs the support of at least 16 of the 21 countries that use the euro.
The timing is not easy. On 29 October the ECB kept its deposit rate at 2.5%, after two rises this year, with prices in the euro area 3.8% higher in September than a year earlier. Some economists expect another rise in December. In the Netherlands, Statistics Netherlands (CBS) reported on Wednesday that inflation went up to 3.7% in October, from 3.4% in September: the fourth rise in a row and the highest since April 2025. Energy, including fuel, was 14.4% more expensive than a year ago. Food, by contrast, was slightly cheaper.
So the next ECB president, Dutch or Spanish, will start with the old job description: keep prices steady in a year when oil keeps moving them. Knot, after fourteen years at DNB, would at least not need a map of Frankfurt.