Voting time for Pierrakakis and van Petegem in the battle for Eurogroup leadership - The process and the factors that will determine the outcome

The final battle for the presidency of the Eurogroup, the informal but powerful "conclave" of the Eurozone's finance ministers, begins today (11/12) in Brussels and the two main contenders for the position, namely the Greek Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis and his Belgian counterpart, Vincent van Peteghem, will have to wait until the afternoon for the result of the crucial vote, for which diplomats and EU officials have expressed extremely divergent and sometimes contradictory predictions.

The 20 Eurozone finance ministers, who make up the Eurogroup, will begin gathering in Brussels at 15:00 Greek time, while the meeting will begin about two hours later. A little later, around the middle of the meeting, the process will begin, after which everyone will know whether the fifth president in the history of the club of EU member states that use the euro as their official currency will manage to be elected in the first vote, or whether a “second round” will be needed.

To secure the presidency, either Mr. Pierrakakis or Mr. Van Peteghem, both of whom come from the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) that dominates the European Union’s political scene, a simple majority is sufficient. Which means that 11 votes out of 20 in total will be needed to see whether the next president of the Eurogroup will come from Greece or Belgium. It cannot be ruled out that, if no majority is reached for a name, the candidate who receives the fewest votes will be asked to step back and the Eurogroup will now unanimously assign the duties to its new president. Something that has happened in the past.

In 2017, the Portuguese Mario Centeno was elected after three votes, while in 2020, Pascal Donahue from Ireland was elected president of the Eurogroup in the second round, defeating Nadia Calvino from Spain, who was considered the undisputed favorite.

Factors that will influence the outcome
The EPP has six votes (Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg and Portugal) and therefore the process is not only expected to be determined by political criteria and correlations within the European political groups, but also by current geopolitical developments.

Belgium strongly opposes any attempt by the European Commission and many other EU member states to use frozen Russian assets held in EU financial institutions to finance Ukraine, which is in urgent need of financial support. Some €185 billion in frozen Russian assets are managed by the Brussels-based Euroclear financial depository, while another €25 billion are held in institutions in other EU member states, such as France, Sweden and Cyprus.

The Belgian government is concerned that it may eventually be forced to return the money to Moscow if Russia challenges the decision to freeze the funds in a Belgian court or if sanctions against Russia are not renewed. Belgium’s stance has angered several EU member states, with the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, all three of which are in the eurozone and therefore have one vote each in the Eurogroup, appearing particularly annoyed.

However, several of Mr. Van Peteghem’s supporters turn the argument around, arguing that giving Belgium the presidency of the Eurogroup would be a good way to overcome the country’s resistance to using frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s needs.

On the other hand, the assumption of the presidency of the Eurogroup by the Greek Minister of Finance, Mr. Peirakkakis, would send a clear message to all sides, as it would mean that the "therapy" imposed on Greece after the economic crisis worked, with the result that our country would find itself from a situation in which it was in danger of being outside the Eurozone, to the point of now exercising its presidency.

The comparison of Belgium and Greece, on issues of public debt and fiscal policy, which would have seemed unthinkable a few years ago, shows that Greece's prospects are more favorable. According to Eurostat data, Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio is decreasing due to strong growth and surpluses, while Belgium's remains high (around 107% of GDP) and may surpass Greece's by the end of the decade if deficits are not controlled.