Lagarde attributes the strength of Spain's GDP after the pandemic to "the contribution of foreign labor."

" Spain's strong GDP performance in the wake of the pandemic, which has helped sustain the eurozone aggregate, is also largely due to the contribution of foreign labor ," said European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde on Sunday during her address at the Jackson Hole Symposium, held on the occasion of the emblematic annual meeting of central bankers.

Lagarde thus emphasized the structural importance of immigration's contribution to the current performance of the European economy, to which she attributed the growing flexibility of the labor market , half of the job growth since the pandemic, and the vigorous growth of countries like Spain, which has relied more on the accumulation of human capital than on improving its productivity.

French policy has explained that it would have been reasonable to think that in a context of rising interest rates, employment would have suffered and unemployment would have grown, as has occurred in other phases of European history, but that, on the contrary, employment growth in Europe has been above historical standards.

In a context marked by constant pressure from the Trump administration on the chairman of the Federal Reserve to adapt monetary policy to Washington's demands, Lagarde made an explicit defense, without referring to the specific case, of the independence of central bankers, which she considered critical for them to perform their duties properly.

The ECB president has referred to her time as managing director of the IMF, where, she said, she was able to see the consequences of the loss of central bankers' independence. " The central bank becomes dysfunctional . It starts doing things it shouldn't. The next step is disruption, instability, or something even worse," she warned.