Bundesbank Vice-President Buch clears hurdle

The Vice-President of the German Bundesbank, Claudia Buch, cleared a decisive hurdle on her way to the top of the banking supervision of the European Central Bank (ECB) on Wednesday. After a public hearing in the EU Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON), which was marked in part by very uncomfortable questions, 29 MEPs backed the German financial expert, 23 voted against her, and two abstained. The background for the extremely critical attitude of the Parliamentarians was that in an earlier secret ECON meeting, the coordinators of the political groups had spoken out in favor of Buch’s competitor Margarita Delgado, Vice President of the Bank of Spain.