And neither is the federal reserve in the US. The Federal Reserve is allegedly independent from the government. Does the ECB work in a similar manner?

> And neither is the federal reserve in the US. The Federal Reserve is allegedly independent from the government.

No, its not.

The Fed Board of Governors (like other independent federal agencies) is independent within the government; which is a term of art for executive-branch agencies with leadership board/council/commission that have terms (both length and staggering, usually) and partisan composition rules which prevent them from being reshaped over a short term to reflect the partisan interest of the current President and/or Senate majority, even when those are aligned.

Because its powers are assigned by Congress under law and freely changeable by Congress through new law, it is not and cannot be independent of government (even of by “government” you mean only the President and Congress.)

It is quite independent. They are in a tug of war with the commission and the council of ministers by design, so their autonomy fluctuates with time, but the commissioners (and several member-states) are regularly quite unhappy with the ECB. The ECB typically does not care about politics and looks only after economical indices. They are known to be afraid of the tiniest bit of inflation, which resulted in counter-productive policies at time.

I am not familiar enough with the federal reserve to say how similar they are.