01 July 2020

POLITICO: Nadia Calviño’s daunting Eurogroup bid

In the race for the Eurogroup presidency, the Brussels eurocracy has a clear favorite, and she’s one of their very own: Spanish Finance Minister Nadia Calviño, who spent 12 years in top civil service jobs at the European Commission.

Venture beyond the bubble, however, and enthusiasm for Calviño as the next leader of the exclusive club of EU finance ministers starts to fade. More fiscally conservative or liberal capitals are especially leery of replacing one Iberian social democrat, the Portuguese Mário Centeno, with another — especially at a moment when the EU is contemplating a coronavirus recovery plan that would require taking on up to €500 billion in collective debt.

For these skeptics, including the so-called frugal countries that are resisting the recovery package, either the conservative Irish candidate, Paschal Donohoe, or the Luxembourgish liberal, Pierre Gramegna, would be safer choices for one of the eurozone’s most influential posts.

Some EU powerbrokers are also reluctant to award yet another top EU job to Spain, which is already represented in the bloc’s upper ranks by foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

Calviño’s boosters argue that she is precisely the right woman at the right time: a master of EU finances who can navigate Brussels bureaucracy with her eyes closed, who hails from one of the countries hardest hit by the coronavirus.

“It is no secret that there is support for Nadia Calviño’s candidature in the German government” — Angela Merkel, German chancellor

As a woman at a moment when gender balance is a top priority, Calviño’s candidacy raises the tantalizing prospect of the first-ever female head of the Eurogroup joining the first-ever female president of the European Commission and the first ever female president of the European Central Bank — an idea already enthusiastically promoted by Angela Merkel, the EU’s most influential leader (and the first-ever female German chancellor).

“It is no secret that there is support for Nadia Calviño’s candidature in the German government,” Merkel said in a recent interview with a consortium of newspapers. “I am always pleased when women get leading political roles, and the Eurogroup has never been headed by a woman.”

Unprecedented opportunity

The post of Eurogroup president is perhaps the most unusual in the EU hierarchy: the official leader of the club of eurozone finance ministers, which by definition meets “informally.”....

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