“We have received two excellent applications”: the euro zone wants to decide “by the end of the year” the succession of Christine Lagarde at the head of the ECB

The countries of the euro zone want to decide "by the end of the year" the succession of Christine Lagarde at the head of the European Central Bank (ECB), said Monday the president of the Eurogroup Kyriakos Pierrakakis. Two candidates, the Dutchman Klaas Knot and the Spaniard Pablo Hernandez de Cos, were proposed to replace the French official, who announced at the end of October her early departure from the presidency of the ECB, scheduled for February. “We have received two excellent applications,” Kyriakos Pierrakakis told the press, before a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels, during which this nomination process will be discussed, without a decision being expected at this stage.

“We have a tight timetable ahead of us to make this choice,” and “the ambition is to complete the entire process by the end of the year,” he added. The heads of state and government will decide Formally, the Eurogroup, an informal body which brings together the finance ministers of the euro zone, is responsible for recommending a candidate to the heads of state and government, but it is the latter who will have control over this procedure, since it is up to them to make the final decision, explained the leader. Spanish Minister Carlos Cuerpo defended the candidacy of Pablo Hernandez de Cos, former boss of the Bank of Spain and current director of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

“His hand does not tremble, but he has always shown himself capable of reaching compromises, and he has very solid economic and technical experience,” he argued. Klaas Knot, for his part, confided, in an interview with the Financial Times published on Monday, that if he were appointed head of the ECB, he "would not hesitate" to use its arsenal in the event of a new debt crisis, and did not rule out developing "new tools" for intervention.

Machine-translated from French