They don't hold back from Paris. At the EU summit that will open tomorrow, France will continue to support Mario Draghi's candidacy for the presidency of the ECB. The confirmation arrived this morning and it wasn't at all obvious after Lorenzo Bini Smaghi's latest idea. In exchange for backing Super Mario, the Italian government had promised that the Italian adviser to the ECB executive committee (whose mandate expires in May 2013) would resign to make room for a French representative. But when asked to step aside, Bini Smaghi did not respond. Yet three public warnings have already arrived directly from Silvio Berlusconi.
Despite this, "there are no question marks on France's support for Draghi", confirmed the spokesman of the French Executive, Francois Baroin. However, the affair embarrassed the Italian premier, who had made a commitment to French president Nicolas Sarkozy at the Rome summit last April. Foreign Minister Franco Frattini tried to tone it down: “The solicitation made by the Italian government is not illegitimate. I hope that a solution will be found and that in full respect of the bank's autonomy this, which is a consolidated tradition, will be taken into account. It has been applied in other cases, I believe that it should also be applied in this one”.
But the question seems to play out entirely on the field of the counterpart. Bini Smaghi has made no secret of aiming for the leadership of Bank of Italy, but the Executive, which is responsible for deciding on the new governor together with the head of state, does not seem to consider the Florentine banker the most suitable person for the job. For the governor's seat, Draghi's current deputy, Fabrizio Saccomanni, and the director general of the Treasury, Tremonti's favourite, Vittorio Grilli, remain in pole position.
