Image: Banque de France/Emmanuel Moulin
The Banque de France (BdF) has a new governor. His name is Emmanuel Moulin, and he’s a former executive director at the World Bank who made his way up the ranks of the French civil service and has served the French state for over 20 years.
French lawmakers narrowly approved Moulin’s nomination on 20 May. He succeeds François Villeroy de Galhau, who stepped down a year and a half ahead of the end of his six-year term.
But Moulin’s appointment did not come without struggle. French politicians grilled Moulin for three hours over his political ties to past French presidents and questioned whether he would maintain central bank independence.
And a big question for some National Assembly members and nonprofits is whether he will go beyond the BdF’s status quo on green issues or if he will push further than his predecessor on climate.
The Banque de France’s green leadership
Under Villeroy de Galhau, the BdF has become a de facto leader of the G20 when it comes to green economic policies.
A large portion of the central bank’s research is spent looking into climate issues and its impact on the French economy. It also hosts the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a coalition of financial regulators that develops recommendations for central banks’ response to climate change. Its non-monetary portfolios have a fossil fuel exclusion. The BdF also has a climate change centre to coordinate the central bank’s green initiatives and hosts an annual academic conference on climate-related topics.
Those efforts have led to it achieving the best score in the Green Central Banking Scorecard for several years in a row.
And it’s that work that Moulin was referring to when he said during a National Assembly hearing that he is “committed to continuing along this path charted by the current Governor and his teams”.
Questions about a green interest rate
In between the questions of Moulin’s connections to former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who has been convicted of corruption, and whether he could maintain independence given his previous role as the secretary general of the current president Emmanuel Macron, several politicians asked Moulin about his views on the central bank promoting a green transition.
Moulin was asked whether he would, as a member of the European Central Bank (ECB), encourage the eurozone’s central bank to look into green interest rates – interest rates that are lower for the financing of projects that support a green transition.
Moulin’s answers indicate he is in favour of at least considering the concept.
“It seems to me that if the European Central Bank were to resort again to long-term refinancing operations (TLTROs) of the type it used during the Covid crisis, we could indeed consider applying different interest rates in favour of green assets,” he said.
Charles Rodwell, a deputy from the centre-right Renaissance party, asked about the greening of the ECB’s monetary policy, while Philippe Brun, a deputy from the Socialist party, asked if Moulin would make BdF’s climate indicator, which assesses French companies’ decarbonisation efforts, mandatory.
To which Moulin said no.
“I think it’s more appropriate to focus on educating companies, to provide them with a climate indicator, and to enable them to make progress in incorporating climate considerations into their operations, rather than imposing a requirement that, in my opinion, would be poorly received”.
Moulin listed several other roles that the BdF can play in providing companies with information around the economic impact of climate change, including through research and international influence through the NGFS, as well as reducing the central bank’s own carbon footprint and including green bonds in its investment portfolio.
He also pointed to some of the ECB’s work on greening its monetary policy, such as its climate factor in its collateral framework and including climate transition risks into corporate rating models and climate stress tests.
“I believe these are desirable measures that position the Banque de France as a pioneer in the fight against climate change”.
Potential for Moulin to do more
Climate advocates welcomed Moulin’s interest in green TLTROs and his interest in fostering the BdF’s green climate goals.
Clarisse Murphy, central banks expert at French NGO Reclaim Finance, said she was “pleasantly surprised” to see how often climate change was mentioned at the hearings and shows how it’s a core issue for French politicians who “will really scrutinise Moulin on this topic in the next few years”.
Murphy also noted that Moulin seems to be more open than Villeroy de Galhau towards dual interest rates. But how open is still uncertain, as he takes a very passive approach to looking at it, she added.
“There’s a little bit of uncertainty as to whether he actually believes [green TLTROs] should be implemented or would be actively pushing for it, or whether he just thinks, okay, this is an interesting position, maybe we would look into it when the time is right, but he would not necessarily push for that discussion to happen at the ECB level,” she said.
Stanislas Jourdan, an associate fellow at the New Economics Foundation and researcher at the Sustainable Finance Lab, said France’s high ranking has “fostered a sense of complacency” at the BdF as it would boast about its ranking while dismissing proposals like dual interest rates which would have a real impact on the green transition.
“The biggest risk right now is that the BdF remains comfortably proud of its leading position and forgets to throw its weight behind where it matters most: championing new audacious green policies within the Eurosystem.”
Leadership from Moulin and others is needed if Europe wants to become a leader in the green transition, as the ECB undergoes a review of its refinancing operations, a monetary policy tool that the central bank uses to provide liquidity to banks.
“We need to see very soon some proactive leadership from the BdF and other national central banks to integrate secondary climate objectives into the ECB’s upcoming structural refinancing operations, otherwise the window will close,” said Jourdan.
This page was last updated June 12, 2026
Written by
Moriah Costa is the Editor-in-Chief of Green Central Banking and has over a decade of experience writing about banking and finance. She is an award-winning American journalist based in Paris and has written for major international publications, including Reuters, The Guardian, and S&P Global. Having grown up in water-stressed Arizona, she has always had a strong interest in bringing awareness to climate and environmental issues.
