The Bank of France is becoming “Macronian”: Emmanuel Moulin is its new governor. But what purpose do central banks serve today?

Emmanuel Macron has made his move on the financial chessboard: Emmanuel Moulin , current Secretary General of the Elysée Palace and a trusted aide to the President, will succeed François Villeroy de Galhau as head of the Banque de France . This change is not only making waves in the Parisian halls of power, but also raising a structural question well-known to those familiar with real macroeconomics: what sense does it make, today, to appoint a politically committed "enarch" instead of a monetary scholar to lead a central bank in the Eurozone?

Who is Emmanuel Moulin: the "Grand Commis" for all seasons?

At 57, Moulin embodies the quintessential embodiment of the hyper-elitist French state machine. Trained at Sciences Po and ENA (the factory of French technocracy), he's not an economist who spends his nights studying credit elasticity or econometric models of inflation. He's, rather, a crisis manager and an expert in debt diplomacy.

His trajectory is a masterpiece of balancing act and political survival:

• The crises of the 2000s and 2010s: He managed debt renegotiations for the Paris Club , the organization that renegotiates the public debts of developing countries, and served as economic advisor to Nicolas Sarkozy during the post-Lehman financial collapse. Did he use it to regulate/reduce French government debt?
• Revolving doors in the private sector: Brief but lucrative excursions into Citigroup, Mediobanca and Eurotunnel, while keeping its network intact.
• The heart of Macronia: Bruno Le Maire's cabinet director (2017), powerful Director General of the Treasury (2020) to manage the Covid era, Gabriel Attal's cabinet chief and finally Secretary General of the Elysée.

Described by friends as a “rigolard” (jovial) type, capable of perfectly imitating the voices of the presidents of the Fifth Republic and a great weaver of networks, Moulin has already begun his campaign to overcome the final obstacle: the approval of the parliamentary Finance committees.

The nomination market and the opposition's indignation

High-level appointments never come cheap. According to rumors, the Senate has granted a general approval in exchange for the "Defender of Rights" post offered to Senator François-Noël Buffet. This is a purely political exchange that the opposition doesn't appreciate. For Éric Coquerel (radical left), Moulin "does not meet the criteria for neutrality" and is "the heart of Macronia," while for Jean-Philippe Tanguy (RN), he is "one of the worst figures" in the Macronian apparatus, considered one of the key figures responsible for the explosion of French public spending, which has increased by 11 percentage points in fifty years.

The elephant in the room: the end of national monetary policy

The real issue, which interests economic observers and the markets, is structural. The appointment of a senior Treasury official, closely tied to the government, to head the Central Bank is a litmus test of how the Eurozone functions today.

Role of the Central Bank (Theory)	Reality in the Eurozone (Today)
Control of the money supply	ECB Exclusive (Frankfurt)
Setting interest rates	Decided by the ECB Governing Council
Lender of last resort	Absent at national level (EU treaty ban)
Role of the National Governor	Lobbying for one's own debt and banking supervision

If the Banque de France doesn't mint its own currency and set interest rates, what is its true purpose? To serve as a political bulwark on the ECB board in Frankfurt (until 2032). And who better than Moulin, former Director of the Treasury, to act as the "unionizer" of French government bonds (OATs) at the European level? Ultimately, he's the perfect person to occupy the chair, not to implement monetary policy.

The economic fallout and the illusion of independence

From a pragmatic Keynesian perspective, this choice marks a dramatic reversal of the dogmas of Maastricht austerity. The treaties mandated "independent" central banks, unconnected with government budgetary needs. Macron, instead, places a government official at the helm.

With France's deficit spiraling out of control, the Elysée Palace is ensuring that, in European forums, Paris's voice is not that of a German-centric monetary rigorist, but that of a debt manager accustomed to spending to save the system. Moulin's appointment draws the curtain on the illusion of independence: in today's Europe, national central banks have effectively become diplomatic divisions of the Ministries of Economy, charged with negotiating the state's financial survival at the Frankfurt table.

The article "The Bank of France is becoming "Macronian": Emmanuel Moulin is the new governor. But what purpose do central banks serve today?" comes from Scenari Economici .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-banca-di-francia-diventa-macroniana-emmanuel-moulin-e-il-nuovo-governatore-ma-a-cosa-servono-oggi-le-banche-centrali/ on Wed, 06 May 2026 07:00:02 +0000.