BRUSSELS, Nov 9 — The EU wants to name the next head of the European Central Bank by the end of the year, Eurogroup chief Kyriakos Pierrakakis said today, before ministers held their first discussions on a successor to Christine Lagarde.
Former Dutch central bank chief Klaas Knot and Spain’s Pablo Hernandez de Cos, head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), are the two candidates to replace Lagarde, who announced last month that she would step down in February.
“The ambition here is that the whole process would have completed itself by the end of the year,” Pierrakakis said before a Eurogroup meeting of euro area finance ministers, when the ECB race will be on the agenda.
Pierrakakis said that Dutch and Spanish ministers would present their candidates, and that later on Monday he would meet with Antonio Costa, head of the European Council, which represents EU member states’ leaders.
