European Union leaders agreed on Tuesday to name France’s Christine Lagarde as the new head of the European Central Bank and sealed a deal on filling the EU’s other top four jobs after marathon talks that have exposed deep divisions in the bloc.
Three days of summit negotiations that at times looked close to collapse ended with a deal that now must be approved by the European Parliament but was immediately rejected by the socialist bloc.
“Done!” said Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who was first to break the news on Twitter that leaders had finally clinched a deal.
Under the deal, von der Leyen, a close ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, will replace Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm.
“After all, Europe is a woman,” Donald Tusk, the outgoing chair of EU summits, told reporters, referring to the ancient Greek myth of Europa who gave her name to the continent.
Lagarde, once France’s first woman finance minister and since 2011 head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is a strong advocate of female empowerment, although she has no direct, active monetary policy experience.
The biggest task for Lagarde, who had previously denied any interest in an EU job, will be to revive the euro zone economy.
“Christine Lagarde will… be a perfect president of the European Central Bank,” Tusk said. “I am absolutely sure that she will be a very independent president…”
Von der Leyen, if approved, would run the powerful Commission, which supervises EU states’ budgets, acts as the bloc’s competition watchdog and conducts trade negotiations with outside countries. Her presidency would shape policy for the world’s biggest trade bloc and its 500 million people.
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