Nadia Calviño faces her last weeks as first vice president of the Spanish Government after achieving the necessary support to assume the presidency of the European Investment Bank (EIB), the financial arm of the European Union, starting in January. Calviño’s appointment is good news, because it will be the first women that reaches the top of the EIB in its 65 years of history and because it corrects the underrepresentation of Spain at the top of the European institutions. The EU’s fourth economy must aspire to greater participation than it has with the vice-presidencies of Luis de Guindos (European Central Bank) and Josep Borrell (European Commission).
The designation is also welcome because amends two previous diplomatic failures of Spain and Calviño herselfwho tried, unsuccessfully, to take over the leadership of the International Monetary Fund (2019) and the presidency of the Eurogroup (2020).
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The Galician has been skillful in the moment chosen to leave the Spanish Government, which she arrived in 2018 with a marked technical profile and with the orthodoxy of a senior European official as a compass. Five years later, however, returns to Europe with a much more politicized, pragmatic and populist image, so much so that even businessmen have whistled at him in public. Her definitive legacy has yet to be written, but she is the material author of the economic responses that Spain has given to external events (such as the covid pandemic or inflation after the war in Ukraine) and internal events (coalition government between PSOE and Podemos ). Thanks to them and the temporary elimination of the fiscal rules of the European Union, the Spanish economy today enjoys good health, although it is slowing down.
Calviño’s replacement as head of Economy will be much more complicatedwith a Government made up of multiple ideological souls – also economically – and with a European Union that will re-establish fiscal rules and demand austerity policies.