Renew Europe deplores the decision made by the Eurogroup to present, once again, a male-only shortlist of candidates for the position of new member of the ECB's executive board and then appoint from it a man to fill Yves Mersch vacant position.
Luis Garicano MEP, Vice-president of Renew Europe and Coordinator for Renew Europe on the ECON Committee said;
“There are only two women out of the twenty-seven members of the ECB Board. By failing to nominate a female candidate, the Eurogroup has missed a historic opportunity to reverse the gender gap in top finance jobs.
The position of Renew Europe has been clear from the beginning: we need to introduce effective tools to redress gender imbalance in EU's top financial institutions.
More specifically, we recently issued guidelines in which we requested Member States to propose a gender-balanced shortlist of, at least, two names for every high profile appointment requiring approval from the ECON committee. In parallel one of the main goal of the FEMM committee is to defend the promotion of equality and equal opportunities for women.
The European Parliament should not be the only institution calling for solutions. We are continuously surprised to see that Council and Member States do not think this is a fight worth taking.”
Samira Rafaela, MEP, Coordinator for Renew Europe on the FEMM Committee said;
'It is urgent to achieve gender balance in institutions like the ECB. Even though more women graduate from universities, they earn on average 16% less than men do and only 8% of CEO's of the EU's largest companies are women. The ECB, as an official EU institution, must lead by example and the eurogroup should have also proposed female candidates for this position. Women have the right to decide about their future and the generations that come after them. We could see how necessary it was to have women in decision making process during this crisis. The European Parliament was clear about shortlists. It needs to be gender balanced. And our EU organizations can’t and should not ignore that.'
Renew Europe ECON and FEMM MEPs find this situation unacceptable and will continue to do everything we can to appoint more women in top finance jobs.
