Potential candidates emerge for leadership of eurozone bailout fund
Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands consider candidates to replace Klaus Regling
Bailout boss
With a vacancy looming at the eurozone bailout fund later this year, member states are beginning to discuss potential candidates, write Sam Fleming in Brussels and Peter Wise in Lisbon. Those who are interested in running the European Stability Mechanism will have to throw their hats into the ring early next week, and a few names are beginning to surface already.
Klaus Regling, the managing director of the European Stability Mechanism, (and previously boss of its predecessor the European Financial Stability Facility) is stepping down this year. The German economist’s successor will face a tricky task re-energising an institution that has struggled to carve out a role for itself in the most recent economic crises in euroland.
Finance ministers want to decide the matter as soon as May. As Europe Express has previously written, Luxembourg’s former finance minister Pierre Gramegna, who stepped down earlier this year, has been seen as a possible contender.
Officials are however beginning to discuss some other possible names — although no formal candidates have declared their hands. One is Marco Buti, the chief of cabinet of EU economics commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, according to people familiar with the process.
Buti, an Italian, is former head of the economics directorate-general of the European Commission. He joined the commission in 1987 and would bring decades of economic policymaking experience to the post. But it’s not yet clear if member states are more inclined to appoint a technocrat or a politician with a finance ministry background such as Gramegna.
Italy, which would have to decide to formally back Buti, also has a somewhat tempestuous relationship with the ESM. Politicians in Rome tend to turn their noses up at its loans because they view them as too politically toxic to countenance.
The Netherlands has meanwhile also been eyeing the post. Menno Snel, a former state secretary of finance, has been mentioned as one possible contender. João Leão, who until recently served as Portugal’s finance minister and is now a professor at University Institute of Lisbon, is also seen as a potential candidate.
The Dutch finance ministry declined to comment, as did the Portuguese and Italian governments, while the Luxembourg finance ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The big question surrounding the ESM is whether change at the top will be accompanied by a deeper rethink about its job in Europe’s economic crisis-fighting infrastructure. Thus far, however, the debate about the future role of the ESM is one that finance ministers have shown little appetite for taking on.