The Euro Zone opinion
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Over the last few years, the PP hasn’t stood up to Pedro Sánchez’s government as much as one would expect from an opposition ... party, especially during the pandemic. It has, however, refused to back the coalition’s nominee for the next governor of the Bank of Spain, a position which became vacant in June when Pablo Hernández de Cos’s six-year stint expired.
The immediate result of the PP’s recalcitrance was a minor embarrassment for Spain on the EU stage. When policy-makers at the European Central Bank (ECB) met this week to discuss the bloc’s fiscal policies, it was the first time in the organisation’s 26-year history that a fully-fledged governor of the Bank of Spain wasn’t present.
Instead the bank’s deputy governor Margarita Delgado, who’s acting as its boss until a replacement for de Cos is found, represented Spanish interests. In her caretaking role she could take part in the ECB discussions but not vote - which is not as big a hindrance as it might sound, because ECB policy is hardly ever put to a formal show of hands. Still, she must have felt a little sidelined.
One senior ECB official said that Spain’s lack of a governor at Thursday’s meeting was “embarrassing”; but the PP was right to block Sánchez’s nomination, even if doing so has resulted in a temporarily headless Bank of Spain.
The PSOE leader claims that José Luis Escrivá, who currently serves as minister of digital transformation and civil service, has all the necessary experience: he was head of monetary policy at the ECB from 1999 to 2004 and held various senior positions at BBVA from 2004 to 2012. Those are heavyweight credentials, but one wonders whether Escrivá would prove a sufficiently objective leader of the most important economic institution outside the government. The ideal nominee would have no background in politics at all.
One of the main reasons why de Cos was so effective as governor was his lack of political affiliation: when he was nominated by Mariano Rajoy’s crumbling PP government in May 2018, he’d already been an economist at the Bank of Spain for two decades and never officially attached to any party. Neither is Escrivá, to be fair (he’s not a member of the PSOE), but he has been in Sánchez’s cabinet since 2020, first serving as minister for inclusion, social security and migration before acquiring his present portfolio.
Back in June, when de Cos stepped down, there was talk of Montserrat Martínez Parera taking his place as the bank’s first female governor. Currently vice president of the National Securities Market Commission, Parera is just as qualified for the job as Escrivá. But she also fulfils what should be a minimum requirement: not having been, at any time, a minister in the present government.
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