2026-01-19 16:41:00
The current Vice President of the European Central Bank is Luis de Guindos of Spain, who has been serving in the role since June 2018 but will step down in May and the political wrangling for a replacement is ongoing.
A Eurogroup meeting is underway and some reports say the next ECB vie president is on the agenda, with a selection being possible. A winner would need support from at least 16 of 21 countries, covering 65% of the population. The nominee could be picked today but the ECB and European Parliament would need to be consulted before leaders confirm the winner in March.
The frontrunner is seen as Mário Centeno, who was formerly the governor of the Bank of Portugal. However before today’s meeting, Portugal’s finance minister said the election of Ceneno will be “difficult”, but that there is still “some hope”. Working against him is that before de Guindos, the Vice President was also from Portugal — Vitor Constancio. Before him, there were VPs from Greece and France.
There is always some horse-trading over this at the eurozone level and it sometimes results in a dark-horse candidates getting pushed to the front. Here are the other names that have been touted
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Martins Kazaks – Governor, Bank of Latvia (Latvia)
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Olli Rehn — Governor, Bank of Finland (Finland)
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Boris Vujčić — Governor, Croatian National Bank (Croatia)
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Madis Müller — Governor, Eesti Pank (Estonia)
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Rimantas Šadžius — Former Minister of Finance (Lithuania)
The bigger decision will be on the next ECB President, as Lagarde’s term will end in October 2027.
The Europgroup meeting is expected to conclude by 18:45 CET (1245 pm ET), followed by a press conference.
In terms of market moves, I wouldn’t imagine there will be a reaction. The euro is up 44 pips today to 1.1641. More likely to move the markets are any comments in the press conference about Greenland.
