Close Regling, the current executive director of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), will expire in October 2022, and his successor has been nominated by four governments.

Eurozone finance ministers will discuss the candidates at a meeting on May 23 and vote on Regling’s successor on June 16. The winning candidate must collect 80 percent of the vote to be elected to the head of the ESM for five years.

ESM is an intergovernmental organization that brings together all members of the Eurozone to assist financially distressed member states.

For example, this is the case when they are unable to repay their public debt, when their financial sector is in trouble or when they are threatened with destabilizing the country’s economy.

The system was set up in October 2012 to address the success of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), which created a temporary stop gap for Greece, Ireland and Portugal during the Eurozone debt crisis.

However, in order to receive financial assistance, countries must submit an official application and commit to reforms.

Candidates

The governments of Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Luxembourg nominated candidates shortly before the deadline on Monday (May 2), Irish Finance Minister and Eurogroup President Pascal Donohue said in a statement.

Italy has nominated Marco Butti, the director general of economic and economic affairs at the European Commission from 2008 to 2019, before replacing him with EU Economic Commissioner Paulo Gentiloni as chief of staff.

In his current role, Butti is one of the pioneers in reforming the macroeconomic governance framework and economic framework to be proposed later this year.

Meno Snell, who was finance secretary from 2017 to 2019, was nominated by the Dutch government.

Portugal has nominated Joao Leo, who was finance minister in the Costa government from 2020 to March 2022.

Luxembourg nominated Pierre Gramegna, a former finance minister who served from 2013 to January 2022.

Eurozone finance ministers have the opportunity to choose one of their former colleagues to succeed current executive director Klose Regling.

The end of a long career

Wreckling, 71, is the first and only managing director of ESM since its inception in 2012 during the Eurozone debt crisis.

Wreckling was Marco Butti’s predecessor as Director – General of Economics and Finance at the European Commission from 2001 to 2008. He worked in the Federal Ministry of Finance in the early 1990s and helped lay the foundation for the financial and monetary union, which still exists. Today.

By the end of 2021, Regling had publicly criticized the EU monetary rules, which he helped launch as “financially absurd”.

“Politicians need to know that a country can borrow too much or too little,” he said, while ESM economists called for raising the level of public debt in light of the low interest rate environment. Applied for.

The wrestling season ends on October 7. The new director takes office at a time of great financial uncertainty and high national debt.

[Bearbeitet von Frédéric Simon]