Oviedo/Luxembourg, 15/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - Monday's General Affairs Council adopted without discussion a recommendation in favour of nominating the governor of the Greek central bank, Lucas Papademos, as successor to French national Christian Noyer, Vice-President of the European Central Bank. On Saturday, the Finance Ministers reached a "general consensus agreement" on Mr Papademos, with abstention from Belgium, whose candidate, Paul de Grauwe, had been dismissed after two hours of discussion at the informal Ecofin Council in Oviedo.
The Council's recommendation will be forwarded to the ECB Governing Council and to the Parliament, and then adopted by "common accord" by the Member State representatives at the level of the Heads of State and Government, by written procedure. "The procedure should end in May", before the end of Christian Noyer's term of office, Rodrigo Rato, Council President, recalled. Wim Duisenberg, European Central Bank President, pointed out that the ECB Council may adopt its position at its meeting next Thursday. The European Parliament may hear Lucas Papademos on 23 April.
Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders commented on Belgium's abstention during the Ecofin Council, explaining that, by voting for Mr Papademos, Belgium would have undermined the value of its own candidate. Above all, it has put its pawns in position for the next appointments among the six members of the ECB Executive Board, after Mr Duisenberg and Sirkka Hämäläinen's departure in 2003. There are two balances to be taken into account, it insisted. A balance must be reached between those coming from the inner circles of the central banks and the others, and then there is the regional balance. "Mr Noyer was the only member of the Council who did not come from a central bank. With the solution that is on the table today, we are heading towards a system that is practically cooptation within the Bank", Mr Reynders remarked. From the point of view of regional balance, after Mr Duisenberg's departure in July 2003, "Benelux will no longer have a representative (…). Belgium has no request on a name or a candidate, but this imbalance must be taken into account", insisted Mr Reynders. Such a remark could cause concern for Austria, which had renounced presenting a candidate to the ECB vice-presidency, in the hope that the governor of the central bank of Austria, Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell, would be selected to take over from Ms Hämäläinen. Austrian Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser nonetheless refused to comment on the Belgian position, stressing that the debate will not be open until next year. We recall that successors must be found in 2003 for Ms Hämäläinen, 2004 for Eugenio Domingo Solans, 2005 for Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, and 2006 for Otmar Issing. Their term of office will run eight years.
"Both candidates were considered excellent by all ministers. There was not a moment when discussions bore on the nationality of the candidates", Rodrigo Rato assured, speaking in Oviedo. ECB President Wim Duisenberg said he was very pleased about this, and stressed that the "question of nationality is a non-debate". "We shall be truly European the day we stop reasoning in such terms", was the comment from Ernst Welteke, Bundesbank Governor. Nikolaos Christodoulakis, Greek Minister for the Economy, also felt that "appointment at the Central Bank must not be a country issue, and the choice of Mr Papademos was not based on nationality but on ability". He noted, however, that the appointment indirectly reflects the progress made by a country to meet the convergence criteria. French Minister for the Economy and Finance Laurent Fabius remarked for his part that "the decision taken in 1998 has been confirmed" and that "it was decreed that Wim Duisenberg's replacement would be of French nationality". In May 1998, the European Council had agreed that Mr Duisenberg's successor should be French, appointed for a period of eight years, and Jacques Chirac had "informed the Council that the French candidate would be Jean-Claude Trichet", Governor of the Bank of France (who has still to be found innocent by the courts in the Crédit Lyonnais affair). Didier Reynders told the press that he did not challenge the fact that there had been an agreement between Germany and France, but that Belgium did not feel committed by such an agreement.