Ireland’s Paschal Donohoe was elected President of the Eurogroup, replacing Mário Centeno, by the 19 Finance Ministers of the euro area on Thursday 9 July.
His two-and-a-half-year term will begin on Monday 13 July.
Calling himself “deeply honoured”, Mr Donohoe promised to work with all his Eurogroup counterparts and take action to ‘ensure a fair and inclusive recovery” via Twitter. “The challenges are great, but we shall overcome them”, he said at a press conference.
“You are becoming captain of the Eurogroup ship in times of heavy weather”, said European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, assuring him of his support.
The Irish Minister was elected by a simple majority of votes in two rounds of voting, with the second round pitting him against his Spanish counterpart, Nadia Calviño, who was aiming to be the first woman elected to such a post.
Mr Donohoe, who benefited from the transfer of the votes supporting Pierre Gramegna in the first round, was elected by the countries of northern and central Europe and his Christian Democrat counterparts, like his Cypriot counterpart. Ms Calviño was supported by the southern European countries, France and Germany, accounting for more than 75% of the GDP of the euro area.
At the end of the first round, none of the three candidates – Ms Calviño, Luxembourg’s Pierre Gramegna and M Donohoe – had obtained the ten votes that would have enabled them to be directly elected. Mr Gramegna withdrew in favour of the other two candidates.
Mr Donohoe had recently warned against the temptation to introduce at European level a tax on large digital groups, while the United States is holding up international negotiations at the OECD in the run-up to the US presidential elections.
On behalf of the EPP group in the European Parliament, German MEP Markus Ferber welcomed the “fruitful” future collaboration with Mr Donohoe in a statement. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)