Brussels, 23/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 23 October, Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, called on MEPs to reach a position on the possible appointment of Yves Mersch from Luxembourg to the ECB Board of Governors solely on the basis of his qualifications for the job. On Monday, the Parliament's economic and monetary affairs committee produced a non-binding negative recommendation, following an exchange of views with the candidate. MEPs consider that the problem with this appointment involves the failure to provide a female candidate for the Frankfurt-based bank's Board of Governors.
In view of the forthcoming plenary vote on Mersch's candidacy on Thursday, the president of the European Council said that he hoped that the Parliament would, “make its final decision on the current candidate exclusively on the basis of his qualifications. It is urgent that this post is not left vacant”. This appeal, however, did not appear to convince MEPs. The president of the S&D group, Hannes Swoboda, said that Van Rompuy had delivered “a weak performance on gender issues and social questions”. Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the ALDE group said that “Today's statement in plenary from the President of the European Council has done nothing to persuade us that the Council is taking the issue of gender balance seriously” at the European institutions.
Governor of the Bank of Luxembourg, Mersch provided assurances that he knew how to differentiate between personal considerations and principles. Nonetheless, he considered that the question of women's representation needed to be resolved in time and pointed out that Mario Draghi had urged Parliament to “make everything possible to maintain the integrity of the working of the executive board in time of crisis”.
As well as contributing to the debate on gender balance, Mersch also spoke about the ECB's strategic lines. He said that he believed that maintaining price stability was the best way of helping growth and that the ECB would currently allow for a higher level of inflation because it expected it to fall at the beginning of next year. Mersch also said that austerity policies had not just produced negative effects and that this medicine could prove harsh but that it worked. In reply to Philippe Lamberts (Greens/EFA, Belgium), who pointed out to him that the ECB did not have a mandate for making policy and therefore should not speak about subjects such as taxing financial transactions or index linked wages, Mersch said that, on the contrary, monetary policy interacted with other policies. (EL/MB/trans/fl)