Is everything okay if Commissioner Vestager becomes head of the EIB?
Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition, is aiming for the presidency of the European Investment Bank (Italian Daniele Franco is also in the running). But von der Leyen worries about Vestager's conflict of interest. Effectively…
Will Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, responsible for fair trade and antitrust regulation in the European Union, be the new president of the European Investment Bank?
Is everything ok, according to Brussels? Not really: Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has expressed some reservations about Vestager's candidacy.
VON DER LEYEN'S LETTER
In a letter dated June 16 and obtained by Bloomberg on Wednesday, von der Leyen urges Vestager to avoid any conflict of interest related to his candidacy to head the European Investment Bank (EIB). The chair asks the Commissioner to indicate when she should leave the Commission, and to ensure that she will not use Commission resources to promote her candidacy.
"These measures", writes von der Leyen, "are necessary to preserve public trust" in the European institutions, given the potential conflict of interest: he could one day find himself financing, through the EIB, the same projects he developed in the Commission.
VESTAGER'S ANSWER
On June 19, in a letter replying to von der Leyen, Vestager wrote that he “fully shares your desire to avoid any conflict of interest, both real and perceived”. In essence, the Commissioner says she shares the President's recommendations and lets it be known that she will inform the Commission as soon as Denmark – her home country – formally appoints her to the presidency of the European Investment Bank.
Vestager has been Commissioner for Competition since 2014; his second term will end next year.
OTHER CANDIDATES TO THE EIB (CHECK ITALIAN FRANCO)
Italy, Poland and Sweden have also proposed candidates to lead the EIB. The Italian one is Daniele Franco, former director of the Bank of Italy (2020-2021) and Minister of Economy and Finance in the government of Mario Draghi (2021-2022). Draghi was president of the European Central Bank from 2011 to 2019; he was succeeded by Christine Lagarde.
The European Investment Bank is currently chaired by Werner Hoyer, German, appointed in 2012 and reconfirmed in 2018 for a second mandate.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/margrethe-vestager-banca-europea-investimenti/ on Fri, 23 Jun 2023 13:16:24 +0000.