The chair of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee has said Central Bank governor Philip Lane would be the stronger of the two candidates for the post of vice president of the European Central Bank.
Roberto Gualtieri said the majority of the political groups in the European Parliament considered Mr Lane's performance more convincing when the committee met him and Spain's economy minister Luis De Guidos, the other candidate, yesterday.
Euro zone finance ministers will vote on 19 February ahead of a European Parliament hearing and final appointment by EU leaders.
Philip Lane, an economics professor who received a doctorate from Harvard and spent time at Columbia University before returning home to Trinity College Dublin, had also been mentioned as a possible candidate to take over as the ECB's chief economist in 2019.
The 48-year-old was appointed governor of the Central Bank in October 2015 on a seven-year term.
He has acted as an academic consultant for the European Commission, International Monetary Fund, World Bank and a number of central banks, including the ECB.
Professor Lane has most recently spearheaded a taskforce in Frankfurt working on a new "safe asset" aimed at breaking a vicious circle of lending by banks to their national governments.
