The plan of the first vice president of the Government, Nadia Calviño, to leave the Executive in the coming weeks to join the European Investment Bank as the new president on January 1 is complicated. “We are not withdrawing our candidate, he is still Daniele Franco,” an official spokesperson for the Italian Ministry of Economy tells EL MUNDO. His resistance joins the anger in the French Government, as this newspaper published on Monday, over the exchange of stickers between Spain and Germany.
At the moment, it is unusual that after so many months in the race to run for the presidency of the EIB, none of the main official candidates for the position have yet withdrawn, a sign that everyone still sees a game to play. Although the main favorite is still Calviño and his great rival is the Danish Margrethe Vestager, Italy maintains Franco as a candidate. And there is an aggravating factor for the Spanish: the Government of Giorgia Meloni has informally informed Vestager that, in the event that Franco fails, they will support her, which represents a serious threat for Calviño, because the Dane has several small countries such as back.
Bloomberg published Meloni’s plan B this Monday and this newspaper was able to confirm it from knowledgeable community sources, although the official position remains Daniele Franco. This, on the other hand, enjoys prestige among the EU finance ministers since he was a member of Ecofin during the Mario Draghi era, but what works against him is that there has never been a woman at the head of the EIB.
The plan of Calviño and the Belgian minister who coordinates the selection of candidates, Vincent Van Peteghem, is that at the Ecofin council on the 8th, a candidate will be selected so that he can replace the outgoing Werner Hoyer in January. To win, Calviño needs the support of countries that represent 68% of the EIB’s capital and that his number of supports totals 18. In this way, the most populated countries are given priority, but he is also obliged to seek the support of the majority. of small states.
The German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has shown himself willing to support Calviño – “she would be a very good candidate” – but France, the EIB’s second largest shareholder, has the key. The French Minister of Economy, Bruno Le Maire, privately expresses his irritation because he suspects that the pact between Scholz and Sánchez implies that, in exchange for Calviño, the Spanish Government will sacrifice Madrid’s candidacy to host the headquarters of the new Anti-Money Laundering Authority ( AMLA) of the EU and will support Frankfurt. Le Maire wants that headquarters to be in Paris and Meloni herself demands that the AMLA be established in Rome.
Calviño maintains that his support is “very strong”, although it does not emerge. The resigned Portuguese Prime Minister, the socialist António Costa, did provide public support, but it is the only country in the South of the EU that has taken such a step for the Spanish one.
In the event that there is a blockade in the Ecofin on the 8th, there is a risk that the appointment will be postponed for months and even left until the summer, when the countries will have to distribute an endless number of community positions after the European Parliament elections.