![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static.euronews.com\/website\/images\/logos\/logo-euronews-grey-6-180x22.svg\"){kind=logo}
ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\nADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n
Ireland, Lithuania and Spain are vying for leadership of the Eurogroup on Monday, which chairs the monthly meetings of the 20 eurozone finance ministers and plays a key role in coordinating and influencing the Council\u2019s economic policy decisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the past two decades, the Eurogroup has had only four permanent presidents: Luxembourg\u2019s Jean-Claude Juncker (2005\u20132013), the Netherlands\u2019 Jeroen Dijsselbloem (2013\u20132018), Portugal\u2019s M\u00e1rio Centeno (2018\u20132020), and Ireland\u2019s Paschal Donohoe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since 2020, the position has been held by Donohoe, a member of the influential European People\u2019s Party (EPP). But for his potential third term, the Irishman is being challenged by the socialist finance ministers of Spain and Lithuania, Carlos Cuerpo and Rimantas \u0160ad\u017eius, who are offering an alternative vision for the next two and a half years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The vote on Monday will be held in secret. To win, a candidate must secure at least eleven out of twenty votes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cuerpo offers a \u2018renewed\u2019 and ambitious agenda<\/p>\n
The Spanish contender, Carlos Cuerpo, is an economist with a PhD and previous experience at the European Commission and Spain\u2019s fiscal watchdog, AIReF. He has served as Spain\u2019s finance minister since late 2023, when he succeeded Nadia Calvi\u00f1o, who now leads the Luxembourg-based European Investment Bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cuerpo is not the first Spaniard to seek leadership of this informal group. Calvi\u00f1o ran against Donohoe in 2022, and Luis de Guindos\u2014now Vice President of the European Central Bank\u2014also tried to secure the role during his time as economy minister under a Spanish Popular Party government.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In his motivation letter to fellow ministers, Cuerpo laid out an \u201cambitious\u201d and renewed agenda aimed at strengthening the eurozone\u2019s long-term growth, completing the capital markets union, boosting the international role of the euro, and finalizing the banking union.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe time has come to move from discussion to delivery. The credibility of our collective project depends not on what we say, but on what we achieve\u2014together, and without delay,\u201d Cuerpo wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, Spain\u2014along with Germany, France, and Italy\u2014presented a discussion paper arguing that although the Eurogroup has been effective during crises, it has often lacked decisiveness in other areas, particularly in advancing the capital markets union.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a Spanish socialist, the 44-year-old finance minister has also supported issuing new common debt to strengthen Europe\u2019s defence capabilities. He has called for doubling the EU\u2019s next long-term budget\u2014from 1% of the bloc\u2019s GDP\u2014to fund both traditional priorities, such as agriculture and cohesion, and new ones, including security, defence, and the green and digital transitions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Several diplomatic sources suggest the real contest is between Cuerpo and Donohoe. However, Cuerpo\u2019s political family is in the minority within the Eurogroup, and his more transformative proposals may face resistance from fiscally conservative countries like Germany and the Netherlands.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Paschal Donohoe: \u2018predictability\u2019 in times of crisis<\/strong><\/p>\n Amid soaring trade tensions and a war on the EU\u2019s borders, Paschal Donohoe tells his 19 finance peers in a letter seeking their support that the global economy is at \u201ca pivotal juncture\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite all the challenges, the Irishman argues that the Eurogroup remains a source of predictability, stability and transparency. He also praised the achievements of recent years under his leadership, while warning that more work is needed.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The changing external environment gives us the impetus and imperative to progress on long-standing issues and deliver on our shared priorities,” he said, promising to remain an honest broker in the group\u2019s negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n If he is re-elected, he plans to deepen the European capital markets, make progress on the digital euro, promote greater dynamism in integration, and continue to invest in security cooperation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAn awful lot can happen in a number of weeks in the world that we’re in, but I am encouraged by the support I’ve currently received,\u201d the Irish finance minister told Euronews in a recent interview. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u0160ad\u017eius calls for a less concentrated capital markets union<\/p>\n In the race for the presidency of the Eurogroup, Rimantas \u0160ad\u017eius is the wild card. Despite being a highly experienced finance minister from Lithuania, he faces two main disadvantages: he belongs to the socialist political family\u2014meaning he competes for the same pool of votes as Carlos Cuerpo\u2014and he is seeking the backing of smaller countries, a constituency Paschal Donohoe has long cultivated.<\/p>\n \u0160ad\u017eius has served as a member of the Luxembourg-based European Court of Auditors, and has played a leading role in Lithuania’s accession to the eurozone since 2015.<\/p>\n He also chaired ECOFIN during Lithuania\u2019s presidency of the Council of the EU in 2013, a period marked by key decisions on the creation of the Banking Union.<\/p>\n Diplomatic sources suggest \u0160ad\u017eius could attract support from EU member states closest to Russia\u2019s border, but he is not expected to gain enough votes to win the race.<\/p>\n In his letter to fellow ministers, the Lithuanian candidate pledges to promote deeper integration of member states into the euro area, avoid overlaps with the European Council\u2019s agenda, ensure fiscal sustainability, and accelerate the rollout of the digital euro.<\/p>\n Like his rivals, \u0160ad\u017eius commits to completing both the banking union and the capital markets union. However, he stresses the need to address the fact that the latter remains \u201cheterogeneous and more concentrated in Western and Northern Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT Ireland, Lithuania and Spain are vying for leadership of the Eurogroup on Monday, which chairs the monthly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5312],"tags":[2000,7221,46731,299,52160,678,1114,104],"class_list":{"0":"post-243464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-eu-policy","10":"tag-eurogroup","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european-economy","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-lithuania","15":"tag-spain"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114808055230400571","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}