Spanish Finance Minister Nadio Calvino was elected as the new head of the European Investment Bank (EIB) at the meeting of European Union finance ministers on Friday.
Calvino thanked his colleagues for their support and promised the EIB a bigger role than before.
“The EIB will play an even more important role in the future: [see hakkab] finance the green transition, provide financial support to Ukraine and support Europe’s role in the world,” Calvino said.
He also promised to prepare a document describing the bank’s priorities in the near future, which finance ministers will discuss in February, the Financial Times reported.
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire congratulated Calvino and listed Paris’ preferences for future EIB investments: green transition, security and nuclear energy.
Calvino had four competitors, the largest of which was considered to be Margrethe Vestager, the competition commissioner of the European Commission. The Danish commissioner has suspended his mandate on the commission to focus on his candidacy for the bank’s leadership.
Vestager has already promised to return to his job at the European Commission.
Nadia Calvino is a former senior European Commission official who has been working as Spain’s finance minister since 2018.
Although Calvino is not a member of any political party, his departure as Spain’s finance minister means that Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will lose one of his closest allies.
During his tenure Calvin implemented several important reforms. For example, he approved the increase in the country’s minimum wage, led the use of the European Union’s recovery fund and was one of the leaders of the reform of the European energy market. Spain and Portugal were the first countries to introduce a gas price cap. Subsequently, the entire European Union made a similar decision.
However, it has received criticism from business owners. Calvino, for example, introduced an extraordinary tax on the profits of banks and energy companies which brought the state almost three billion euros in revenue. He also demanded that these same companies raise their workers’ wages as well as pay higher taxes.
However, senior EU officials are convinced that the outgoing Spanish finance minister is a safe choice.
Thus the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, described Calvino as a convinced European who has served the interests of the Union for many years.
2023-12-08 16:11:00
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