Brussels, 23/11/2012 (Agence Europe) - By a qualified majority vote on Thursday 22 November, the European summit officially approved the appointment of the governor of the Bank of Luxembourg, Yves Mersch, to the European Central Bank's Executive Board.
The EU27 decided on Mersch's appointment despite opposition from Spain, which vetoed the written procedure for his appointment (for which unanimous voting is required) in an attempt to hold on to the job for Spain (see EUROPE 10723). On Thursday, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy was the only EU leader to vote against Mersch's appointment. The presidents of the European Council and European Commission, Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Durão Barroso, did not make any special announcement about this on Friday 23 November after the end of the special budget summit (see separate article). The French president, François Hollande, promised that France would be “mindful of parity” between men and women for future European appointments.
The European summit appointed Mersch despite the opinion of the European Parliament rejecting his candidacy over gender, rather than competence (see EUROPE 10718). The president of the EP, Germany's Martin Schulz, criticised the EP's attitude in a speech at the start of the special summit saying that the leaders would probably appoint Mersch to the ECB Executive Board although the European Parliament thinks it would be a serious mistake to take such an important decision using a written procedure over a long weekend. In the future, said Schulz, the EP expected the heads of state to respect equal treatment of men and women when appointing people to key European jobs.
Liberals hopping mad. The leader of the Liberals, Belgium's Guy Verhofstadt, slammed what he described as an “institutional coup de force” and Sylvie Goulard, a mover and shaker on this issue, said the European summit had scored three goals against Europe - flouting the process of democratic legitimacy, ignoring gender equality and weakening the ECB. The UK's Sharon Bowles said: “The ECB now has a member on its highest board without a democratically established mandate. Citizens across the EU have been astounded to discover the lack of gender diversity in the ECB, and indeed in other EU organisations. Today's decision also undermines and discredits work being undertaken to make the EU's economic governance system more democratically accountable. We also expect to have a roadmap to gender diversity for central banks, as previously requested. The EP will certainly be taking them to task on this if they do not.” (MB/transl.fl)