(Bloomberg) -- The European Central Bank doesn’t have to wait for the Federal Reserve before cutting interest rates as the two can be out of sync for several quarters, former policymaker Christian Noyer said.

“It’s not unrealistic to believe that they move at different times even if the general movement will probably go in the same direction,” he said on Bloomberg Television on Friday. “But there can be a gap of some months or quarters depending on the circumstances of each economic or monetary zone.”

A delay in Fed easing is proving a key topic for ECB officials as they debate how policy will evolve after likely cutting rates at their next meeting in early June.

ECB President Christine Lagarde has said the Frankfurt-based central bank is data-dependent, not Fed-dependent. Some policymakers have cautioned, however, that the longer there is a gap between the two, the greater the impact will be.

“The ECB is in charge of a large enough monetary union to be really independent on what they decide,” former Bank of France head Noyer added.

--With assistance from Alexandre Rajbhandari and Caroline Connan.

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