The post-Draghi race is about to officially open. A race that will last two years. Within a few weeks, the representatives of the euro area are in fact called to identify a new vice-president of the ECB, thus starting a two-year period of changes at the top of the central bank, which will culminate with the farewell of Mario Draghi, at the end of 2019.
In pole position for the succession of the Italian banker there is always Germany, which after having made way for France with Trichet and Italy, often resentful of Super Mario's choices, is now impatient to be assigned the presidency, at the age of twenty since the creation of the ECB (it was founded on 1 June 1998), at the top of which it has never until now placed its own representative (in fact, before Trichet there was the Dutchman Wim Duisenberg). But the game is still open, given the aggressive ideas of most likely candidate, the head of the Bundesbank, Jens Weidmann, who again yesterday, in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, put pressure on Draghi to end the one billion euro ECB government bond purchase program scheduled for this year.
Weidmann also spoke today in Frankfurt, setting a condition before continuing on the path of the European guarantee on bank deposits, the step that is missing to complete the Banking Union: a limit must be established on the holding of government bonds by credit institutions. “In Europe, the privileged treatment of government bonds in banks' balance sheets must be eliminated to avoid allowing the mutualisation of public debt risks to fall through the window. Receivables from States should not be treated differently from those towards companies or individuals”.
However, even before the renewal of the presidency, there will be that of the vice presidency: the Portuguese Victor Constancio in fact it expires in May of this year, and for his succession the favorite is currently the Spanish Minister of the Economy Luis de Guindos. Finance ministers will kick off the process to choose the new vice-president next Monday, while the decision should arrive within the month of February. But in the meantime France is also moving.
In the logic of a presidential seat reserved for Germany, in theory the vice presidency should go to a southern European country (and for this reason de Guindos is favored), but just yesterday the transalpine president Macron has appointed former MEP Sylvie Goulard as deputy director of the French central bank, where she replaces Anne Le Lorier becoming the first politician (she was also defense minister in Paris) to occupy a top role at the Banque de France. Her appointment should be interpreted as an attempt by Macron to win a prominent position in the ECB, if not in the vice presidency at least in the executive committee (the president of the Supervisory Board of the SSM Daniele Nouy also expires before Draghi).
