Italian FM advances Italy's bid to Eurogroup presidency

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini on Tuesday further advanced Italy's bid for the Eurogroup presidency.

In an interview to Italian daily Corriere della Sera, Frattini said Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti is the perfect candidate as future chairman of the Eurogroup, uniting finance ministers from the 16 euro zone countries plus the European Central Bank (ECB) president and the European Union economics commissioner.

It is the second official endorsement of Tremonti coming from Italian government members.

At the European Council of June Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi publicly endorsed his candidacy for the chair of the Eurogroup, linking it to Italy's defeat in the battle for the presidency of the European Parliament.

The Eurogroup is chaired by Luxembourg's Premier Jean-Claude Juncker, whose third two-year term is set to expire at the end of 2010.

Tremonti has good credentials for succeeding due to his moderate handling of the economic downturn in Italy. In its 2009 report on EU public finance, the European Commission used unusually positive words for Italy's "prudent" response to the financial crisis.

Italy had previously seemed to lobby for the ECB presidency, indicating Italian central bank chief Mario Draghi as the successor of Jean-Claude Trichet, actual ECB leader, whose mandate expires in October 2011.

Last week Frattini announced that "it"s Italy's turn" to run the ECB, creating diplomatic and media upheaval in Brussels.

Mario Draghi's favorable asset is his leadership of the Financial Stability Board during the global economic crisis. Due to his many credentials he is often cited as a potential and valuable successor to Trichet but faces challenge from German ECB member Axel Weber.

However, the parallel bid for the Eurogroup leadership is apparently now more urgent to Italy than that for the ECB presidency.

Frattini said it was too soon to talk about ECB candidates, adding it was at the moment just a "hypothesis about something that could happen."

"Governor Draghi has clarified, as have I, that nobody has presented a candidacy. Simply because the time and conditions are not right to do it and we don't know the rules," Frattini said.

Source: Xinhua