That’s because the ECB almost doubled in size when it became the supervisor for the eurozone’s biggest banks back in 2014, and because the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) also set up in Frankfurt. They’re soon to be joined by the kids of employees at the freshly-established Anti-Money Laundering Agency, which will have a staff of over 400 by 2027. Student numbers are expected to rise further to over 2,200 by 2032.
The news was welcomed by ECB President Christine Lagarde, who had previously raged against an “embarrassing” impasse that resulted in children having to study in “container over containers over containers.”
“After many years of uncertainty, a promising path forwards for the future ESF site has finally emerged,” she said in a joint press briefing with the city government. “We very much hope that the Frankfurt authorities will make swift progress so that the new school site can open as soon as possible.”
All this has been made possible by the decision of the Bundesbank to leave the place that has been its home for 54 years, a bastion of hard currency orthodoxy that stood tall amid the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, multiple oil shocks and European currency crises, making it the inevitable model for today’s European Central Bank.
The move may represent a further step away from the awesome legacy of the Deutsche Mark, but it’s also a relief for today’s Bundesbank, which on Wednesday scrapped its long-planned renovation and expansion project due to massive cost overruns. These had risked damaging its still-unparalleled prestige among the German population.
Originally pegged at €3.59 billion, the cost had soared to €4.6 billion by 2022 before a scathing audit condemned oversized sports facilities, restaurants and guest apartments. A cost-effectiveness review commissioned by President Joachim Nagel concluded it was better to buy a new site than to try to salvage the ageing brutalist complex, a process that has been made more complex and expensive by a decision to grant it special conservation status.
According to Josef, building experts said the main building — often compared to a Holiday Inn on steroids — could be suitable for the school. Other options, he said, include designating part or all of the old headquarters to European institutions, such as the AMLA, and adding a new building to the site.
And happily for both the city and the Bundesbank, finding the money for whatever comes next will be someone else’s problem: The federal government is responsible for covering the cost of a new building for the European School. That means the costly and uncertain renovation of the existing building will have to be covered by Berlin.