ECB Insight: Six Seats, Many Stakes: Who Will Sit on the Executive Board in 2028?
8 September 2025
ECB Insight: Six Seats, Many Stakes: Who Will Sit on the Executive Board in 2028?
- Our call (part 1): Rehn to succeed de Guindos as VP, but gender politics loom
By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – With some two years to go until the position of European Central Bank president needs refilling, we have been looking at possible candidates with the highest potential to secure the top spot.
In recent months, we examined Finland’s Olli Rehn, the Netherlands’ Klaas Knot, Spain’s Pablo Hernández de Cos, Germany’s Joachim Nagel and even Portugal’s Mário Centeno. We also considered possible dark horses.
Today, we go significantly further and start making specific predictions as to the composition of the Executive Board in two and a half years, including not just names (and thus nationalities), but also roles. That is, this is the first in what we expect to be a multi-part series.
Obviously, such an exercise must rely heavily on speculation. Sound though our underlying reasoning may be, the saying here could go: Logic proposes, the EU bureaucracy disposes.
Still, we would be surprised if we didn’t turn out to be at least partly on the mark.
From 1 June 2026: Olli Rehn replaces Luis de Guindos as vice president
The first seat to come up is the one currently held by Luis de Guindos of Spain, who happens to be vice president and will leave the ECB at the end of May 2026.
The vice presidency is not just a rotating portfolio; it is a formally designated position defined in EU primary law, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). As such, whoever takes de Guindos' seat on his departure assumes the job of vice president.
A Spanish successor is improbable: two consecutive Spaniards in the vice presidency would be hard to justify. Spain is not among the big three (Germany, France, Italy), which can virtually guarantee themselves representation (helping explain why Spain already went from 2012 to 2018 without a seat).
Madrid already holds a major EU post, with Nadia Calviño leading the European Investment Bank, and its recent eagerness to let others bear the burden of its defence could be an irritant in broader EU bargaining.
Hanging over all this is the need to accommodate others, including newer member states.
Since the big three will each already hold a seat when de Guindos departs, his vacancy will be filled by one of the smaller (non-Spanish) states. Precedent would point to a Southern European for the fourth time in a row. But precedent is not law, and such conventions will sooner or later give way to the politics of a euro area very different from that of 2002.
At the same time, there is an argument to be made for either one of the newer member states or Finland, even if the latter would be as far as one can get from being either Southern European or a new member of the common currency.
Among the 12 countries to have ever had a seat on the Board, Finland has had the longest absence. The only Finn ever to serve was Sirkka Hämäläinen, whose single, non-renewable five-year term (1 June 1998 to 31 May 2003) was the shortest of the originally staggered mandates designed to ensure one expiry per year (an objective ultimately stymied by various resignations).
Since de Guindos' position is not just any role, but that of the vice presidency, and it seems improbable (though not impossible) that the newer euro area countries will be deemed ready for this honour, Finland is thus left as a particularly logical option.
Still, it would be premature to dismiss the possibility of the vice presidency going to a newer member state, none of which has ever been represented on the Board. To be sure, the prominence of the position — with its Treaty basis, external representation duties and regular appearances before the European Parliament — makes such an outcome less likely, since it favors figures with established visibility in Brussels.
Even so, the political case for ending the exclusion of the newer members is becoming stronger, and there are credible potential contenders: Latvia’s Valdis Dombrovskis, with his long record in the European Commission; Croatia’s Boris Vujčić, a widely respected central banker; and Latvia’s Mārtiņš Kazāks, an active voice in ECB policymaking.
Their chances may be better for a non-VP seat such as the one opening in 2027, but the risk that the 2026 vacancy becomes the occasion for breaking precedent cannot be ignored.
This would represent a potential snag for the most obvious contender: Olli Rehn, the experienced and well-credentialed governor of Finland’s central bank.
Rehn is said to be eyeing ECB President Christine Lagarde’s job, and we cannot rule out that he will either get it or at least hold out for it. However, as discussed previously, he may not be ideal for the presidency, for which we think another especially strong candidate is waiting in the wings.
Even if the time for a new member state has not yet come, the vice presidency may still elude him. In particular, one shouldn’t overlook the likelihood that gender will play a key role in this decision; decision-makers will inevitably take gender representation into account.
Specifically, if the powers that be expect Lagarde to be succeeded by a man (as do we) and are loath to see both the presidency and vice presidency in male hands, that could doom Rehn’s candidacy.
It does not necessarily mean Finland couldn’t still see one of its nationals occupy the position, for example in the person of Bank of Finland Deputy Governor Marja Nykänen.
Nykänen’s limited EU-wide visibility makes her selection as ECB vice president quite speculative, and it could be questioned whether her appointment would serve the interest of ideological balance.
That is where Southern Europe re-enters the frame. The national central banks of both Greece and Portugal both have somewhat higher-profile females – Deputy Governor Christina Papaconstantinou at the former and Vice Governor Clara Raposo at the latter – who are responsible for financial stability.
We can easily imagine either getting a higher calling. But Papaconstantinou’s credentials appear stronger. Beyond her role as Deputy Governor of the Bank of Greece, she sits on the ECB Supervisory Board and played a direct part in Greece’s fiscal stabilization during the debt crisis, with years of visibility in EU fora.
Raposo, Vice Governor at Banco de Portugal and a distinguished academic, comes from a background rooted in research and higher education leadership, with more limited direct exposure to EU-level financial governance. This combination gives Papaconstantinou a clear edge.
That the ECB vice presidency has already gone to Greece need not hinder Papaconstantinou, given that Lucas Papademos’ stint in Frankfurt ended way back in May 2010 (we note that Portugal’s Vítor Constâncio succeeded Papademos, making it a bit soon for a second Portuguese ECB VP).
The stiff price paid by Greece since then – years of harsh adjustment and deep recession – to emerge so successfully from the abyss of the debt crisis could in fact strengthen the case for a Greek candidate.
In the end, whether one thinks that Rehn or Papaconstantinou will succeed de Guindos when his term ends on 1 June 2026 would appear to hinge on gender representation concerns, the influence of which resists prediction.
By a narrow margin, we think Rehn will emerge victorious unless gender balance tips the scales, in which case Papaconstantinou would be a very credible alternative, with Raposo not irremediably far behind.
In the next instalment of this series, we will consider the subsequent Board vacancy, set to occur when Chief Economist Philip Lane leaves exactly one year after de Guindos on 31 May 2027.