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THE EURO ZONE

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Spain's economy minister Nadia Calviño said that it's a "priority" that Christine Lagarde's successor as head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is European

Mark Nayler

Friday, 12 July 2019, 12:58

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The esoteric game of musical chairs within EU and international organisations continued this week, with European finance ministers gathering in Brussels to discuss the next head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to the Washington-based Fund's website, Christine Lagarde, the French lawyer who's headed up the organisation since 2011, has "temporarily relinquished" her role amid rumours that she's to become the next president of the European Central Bank. After the Brussels meeting, Spain's economy minister Nadia Calviño said that it's a "priority" that Lagarde's successor be European. And preferably Spanish too, one imagines: Calviño's name has yet to be discussed in this context (she said it was "premature" to be specific) but it's surely only a matter of time before it is.

Founded in 1945 to "foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth and reduce poverty around the world" (in its own words), the IMF now has a membership of 189 countries. Of the eleven directors who have led the organisation since its inception, only one has been Spanish and he was Rodrigo Rato, disgraced protagonist of the "Black Credit Cards" scandal, who occupied the role from 2004 to 2007. Rato, who also served as economy minister in José María Aznar's Conservative government between 1996 and 2000, is currently serving a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence for embezzlement. Not a director the IMF remembers with fondness, surely.

Lagarde, a former member of the French synchronised swimming team, is the only woman to have headed up the IMF, so the organisation would convey a progressive message if it named Calviño as her successor. And as budget director at the EU Commission from 2014 to 2018, Calviño already has experience of working in complex supranational bodies, although the IMF role would of course bring its own challenges. Finally, her appointment would help fulfil Spain's desire to be better represented on the world stage, an ambition that would also be achieved with Josep Borrell's ascension to a top EU position.

Having made the case for Calviño, though, I should conclude with one major caveat. It's irritating to see members of Sánchez's caretaking government so focused on securing international roles when political chaos dominates at home. More than two months after a general election that gave no single party a majority, Spain's politicians are as far away from forming the next government as ever. There might well be another national vote in the autumn, which would be the fourth in five years. Yet the country's acting economy minister was still able to head to Brussels to discuss the IMF business this week, when surely her time could have been better spent back in Madrid. It was a revealing - and not particularly encouraging - indication of where Calviño's priorities lie.

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