MEPs reject candidate to all-male ECB board

Eurozone countries will be asked by the European Parliament to nominate a new member of the European Central Bank executive board — and ensure the candidate is female.

MEPs voted down the candidate put forward some months ago by member states, who had ignored warnings from MEPs that they would object to yet another all-male ECB board.

While the parliament cannot decide such issues, they must be consulted on appointments to the eurozone’s bank, and they can exercise pressure on the ECB president when he reports to the powerful Econ committee.

MEPs were quick to assure the candidate, Luxembourg central banker Yves Mersch that they had nothing against him personally, but they were furious that despite warnings going back years, the council, representing the member states, has consistently ignored requests to fill the gender gap.

Sylvie Goulard, a French MEP and member of the Econ committee, said it showed disrespect for the parliament and accused the member states of paying lip service to the idea of gender balance.

For the past two years the ECB’s gender imbalance has been raised by MEPs, including at the hearings of previous nominees including the bank’s current president Mario Draghi.

Last May the Econ committee wrote to the eurogroup president and Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker asking that a women be considered for the executive board post and for EU member states to present a medium-term plan to recruit more women to top posts in the ECB, and also to national central banks and finance ministries.

The committee even drew up an informal list of potential women candidates all well qualified for the ECB post.

However, in July the member states recommended Mr Mersch as a candidate, produced no medium-term plan and no assurance that women had been considered for the post.

As a result, the MEPs postponed the hearing of Mr Mersch and yesterday rejected his nomination by 325 votes to 300 with 49 abstentions.

The chair of the Econ committee, Sharon Bowles, was also furious that EU council president Herman Van Rompuy did not make any concrete commitments when he addressed the parliament yesterday.

“Mr Van Rompuy has not taken the opportunity to offer more than lip service to what is a very serious matter. He has promised nothing, not even a road map, for appointing women to the ECB board in the future. European institutions should be leading by example, not dragging their feet,” said the British MEP, a potential candidate for the post of Bank of England governor.

Earlier this week the European Commission was forced to withdraw a proposal to force publicly listed companies to have 40% of their board’s female by 2020 when the Commissioners themselves disagreed over it.

Currently 99% of companies have no female directors.