FRANKFURT(Reuters) – Germany’s Social Democrats will soon be choosing a new head at the Bundesbank. This is the central bank’s national headquarters.

Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats reached a settlement that will see Olaf Scholz (Social Democrat) replace conservative Angela Merkel after 16 years.

Jens Weidmann, the President of the Bundesbank, will be stepping down Dec. 31. This is five years prior to his official second term. He had been opposed for 10 years by the European Central Bank’s easy money policies.

Here is a listing of possible candidates who could succeed him.

ISABEL SCHNABEL

Schnabel is an Executive Board member of European Central Bank, making a change to the Bundesbank impossible.

Schnabel broke the mold of German resistance to negative interest rates, bond purchases and bond purchases in her two-year tenure as an ECB member. She has also defended the ECB against critics from her home country.

Recently, she struck a hawkish note and said inflation could be higher than what the ECB is currently expecting.

JOACHIM NAGEL

Nagel, a Social Democrat, worked for the Bundesbank 17 years. He rose through the ranks and became a member of the board before stepping down as a director in 2016.

His responsibilities at the German central banking included markets and information technology. He would rarely comment on monetary policies.

He serves as deputy head for the Bank for International Settlements’ banking section. After a stint of four years at KfW, a German state bank KfW for four years, he moved to the Bank for International Settlements in 2020.

He is a graduate in economics.

MARKUS BRUNNERMEIER

Professor at Princeton is probably the most diverse candidate, as he has spent most of his research time in the United Kingdom and United States.

Philip Lane (ECB chief economist) has co-authored scholarly articles with him. One of these papers advocated the creation a “synthetic safe asset for euro zones and was rejected by the Bundesbank.

Brunnermeier and other co-authors, in “The Euro and the Battle of Ideas”, argued that the main problem of the euro was caused by a conflict between Germany’s obsession with rules and France’s desire for flexibility. This book called for the creation of an independent banking union.

JAKOB VON WEIZSAECKER

Weizsaecker was the Chief Economist of the German Ministry of Finance, Scholz.

Between 2014 and 2019, he served as a Member of the European Parliament For the Social Democrats and was also a Member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

He is an important member of an aristocratic line and is highly regarded by the German centre right.

JOERG KUKIES

Kukies, Germany’s deputy minister of finance, has served as Scholz’s right-hand man.

A graduate of the University of Chicago in finance, he was employed for Goldman Sachs for 17 years (NYSE:), before joining government in 2018.

He was criticised for his role in the Wirecard https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-wirecard-inquiry-insight-idUSKBN2B811A scandal, for sending Scholz a nine-page memo in which he played down concerns about the payment company and outlined a plan to rescue it with funds from state bank KfW.

MARCEL FRATZSCHER

Fratzscher is considered the most “dovish”, having backed the ECB’s extremely loose monetary policies and called for greater fiscal spending in Germany.

Handelsblatt has been informed by him that there is no reason to be concerned about the inflation rate at the moment and the ECB shouldn’t raise them.

Former European Central Bank economist, He teaches macroeconomics at Berlin’s Humboldt University as well as running the DIW Berlin think tank.

CLAUDIA BUCH

Buch, who was previously vice-president of the Bundesbank since 2014, has served a two year stint as an economic expert on the German Council of Economic Experts.

Weidmann, a 55-year-old former professor at university, is accompanied by Weidmann during meetings of the ECB’s Governing Council.

However, she has avoided much of the monetary debate in public and instead focuses on matters relating to financial stability.

JENS ULBRICH

After five years as general secretary of German Council of Economic Experts for five years, the Bundesbank’s chief economist is now working at the German central bank.

This 52-year-old economist uses Twitter (NYSE.) to express his views, but has yet not spoken out about monetary policies in public. His main focus is explaining the ECB’s decisions as well as commenting on economic outlook.