“Exceptional knowledge” and “great experience”: Madrid pushes its candidate Pablo Hernández de Cos to replace Christine Lagarde at the head of the ECB

Who to succeed Christine Lagarde at the head of the European Central Bank (ECB)? The Spanish government announced this Friday, November 6, that it had proposed the former governor of the Bank of Spain Pablo Hernández de Cos as a candidate for head of the institution according to a letter. The Vice President of the Government, Carlos Cuerpo, says in a letter addressed to the President of the Eurogroup, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, "convinced" that Pablo Hernández de Cos will bring to the Frankfurt institution the same firmness that he demonstrated at the Bank of Spain during his mandate from 2018 to 2024.

The ECB announced at the end of October that Christine Lagarde would leave office on February 7, an early departure which subsequently kicked off the campaign for her succession. Eurozone governments were due to present their candidates by Friday, and eurozone finance ministers will take stock of the process at their meeting scheduled for Monday. One of the main candidates with Klaas Knot Pablo Hernández de Cos, who currently serves as director general of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), is considered one of the main candidates for the position, alongside former Dutch Central Bank governor Klaas Knot - to whom France could provide support under certain conditions.

Carlos Cuerpo, also Minister of the Economy, emphasizes that De Cos combines “exceptional knowledge” of economic, budgetary and monetary policies with “great experience” in international banking and financial stability. When he was governor of the Bank of Spain, he chaired the Basel Committee on banking supervision, as well as the Technical Advisory Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board, where he built a “reputation for technical rigor (…) and ability to unite teams and reach consensus”, specifies Carlos Cuerpo. In his letter, the minister also underlines the independence of the candidate and his ability to communicate clearly with the markets.

Machine-translated from French