The European Central Bank and some European Union governments are at odds over who is eligible to run the ECB because a clause in the Maastricht Treaty is ambiguous on the issue, the Wall Street Journal Europereported today.
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ECB president Wim Duisenberg
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The dispute centres on a clause in the treaty, which interpreted one way appears to ban the bank's current top six officials from running for president and vice-president but read the other way allows some of these officials to compete for the top posts, the newpaper said. The dispute comes at a time when the debate over how long the bank's current president Wim Duisenberg will remain in office has resurfaced.
And a broader interpretation of the treaty could be use to open up the pool of candidates in the selection of the ECB president and vice president, the newspaper said.
The Maastricht Treaty states that the ECB's top six officials -- the president, vice-president and four other members of its executive board -- are elected by heads of states for terms that "shall not be renewable".
For the ECB, that means that its current board members could not run again, because they would be "renewing" their membership of the board.
However, some euro-zone countries argue that board members could legally seek another position because they would not renewing their current jobs.
The Wall Street Journal said that few countries were willing to take an official line on the issue for fear of contradicting the ECB publicly or losing bargaining leverage.
Only Belgium and Portugal appeared to be willing to publicly support the ECB, the newspaper added.