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Spain’s deputy prime minister Nadia Calviño has highlighted her role in her country’s “ambitious economic policy agenda” as part of her pitch to run the European Investment Bank, as she has emerged as the frontrunner to lead the world’s largest multilateral lender.
EU finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Friday are expected to decide who should lead the EIB after its outgoing president, Werner Hoyer, steps down on December 31. The decision has been delayed for months by wrangling among member states, some of which back the second strongest candidate, European Commission vice-president Margrethe Vestager.
Calviño has secured the backing of Germany and several other countries and stayed on in the government during her campaign for the EIB.
In a confidential letter sent to the EIB in August and seen by the Financial Times, the Spanish official said the bank had an “even more important role to play in shaping the future of Europe” after helping the EU become more “resilient to shocks” such as the financial crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Calviño said the EIB had become the EU’s financial arm and praised its record so far. If selected, she would be the first woman ever to run it.
With a balance sheet of roughly €550bn, the EIB is expected to play a pivotal role in funding Ukraine’s reconstruction efforts. There is also an ongoing question whether the new president will show more appetite in investing in nuclear projects, something the bank hasn’t lent to in a long time. France, a nuclear power, whose vote is key, has held out in openly endorsing Calviño or Vestager.
The bank is the world’s largest multilateral lender and has become instrumental to pursue EU policy goals, from the green transition to helping Ukraine, financing projects for €75bn in 2022. Its presidency, which was once an afterthought, has now become one of the top jobs that EU countries fight over.
The EIB’s shareholders consist of EU’s 27 member states, weighted in relation to the size of their economies when they joined the bloc, with the successful nominee requiring the votes of at least 18 countries, where Germany, France and Italy having the largest proportion of the vote.
In her pitch Calviño said that Spain has had “a very positive performance in extremely challenging” local and global circumstances during the time she was deputy premier and economy minister.
“I have successfully led economic policy in Spain for the past five years, along three axes: fiscal responsibility, social justice and forward-looking structural reforms,” she wrote.
She cited Spain’s “strong GDP growth, job creation and international competitiveness” among the indicators that have improved under her steer. Her “leading political profile” gives her a “deep understanding” of European institutions, she said, in reference to her time as EU commission official in charge of mergers and financial services between 2006 and 2018.
“I have successfully managed complex economic and legal files, the European interinstitutional regulatory process and the EU budget,” Calviño wrote.
Even as she’s considered the frontrunner, Calviño is facing strong opposition from Vestager, who took unpaid leave from the commission to run for the EIB and who is still in the race.
In her pitch to the bank and an interview in September with the FT, Vestager said the EIB should be instrumental in helping Ukraine and the war, and tackle climate change.
Additional reporting by Paola Tamma in Brussels
