14/09/2018 (Agence Europe) – The European Commissioner for the Budget, Ginter Oettinger, would be in favour of sharing out the presidencies of the European Commission and of the European Central Bank (ECB) between France and Germany from October 2019. “It would be best to have a German European Commission President and a clever Frenchman as head of the ECB”, he told an interview with the German daily newspaper Handelsblatt on Friday 14 September. Between now and the end of 2019, five senior European positions are to be filled: the Presidencies of the European Parliament, the European Council, the European Commission and the ECB, plus the post of High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs. (MB)