ECB Insight: Six Seats, Many Stakes: Who Will Sit on the Executive Board in 2028?
- Our call (part 2): Lane’s successor – Kazāks, Vujčić and the Dombrovskis factor

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – With less than a year to go until the next anticipated vacancy on the European Central Bank’s Executive Board, we have been looking at possible candidates with the highest potential to take the top spot.

Over the last weeks, 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.

Last month, we ventured out on a limb and predicted that when ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos steps aside on 1 June 2026, Rehn will succeed him.

We continue now in that vein, turning our attention to the following expected vacancy on the Executive Board.

From 1 June 2027: Mārtiņš Kazāks or Boris Vujčić (with a chance of Valdis Dombrovskis) replaces Philip Lane, becoming a regular Board member

The subsequent Board vacancy will occur when Chief Economist Philip Lane leaves exactly one year after de Guindos on 31 May 2027. On balance, this is when we expect one of the newer member states to finally get the nod.

They probably won’t get it when de Guindos leaves, as replacing him would imply becoming vice president, and we suspect this will continue to be reserved for a more core European country.

That applies a fortiori to the next vacancy after Lane’s departure, as this will be that of the presidency.

In other words, Lane’s seat is the next one the new member states could reasonably hope to get, whereas not getting it could imply waiting unduly long – which many would say has already been the case.

Lane himself, widely respected as a technocrat, leaves behind a seat of symbolic weight; Ireland punched above its weight thanks to his role as chief economist, while the Baltics and Croatia still await their turn.

So do others, but for reasons of limited political clout (Cyprus and Malta), perceived corruption and frictions with the EU (Slovakia), recency of accession (Bulgaria) or a stunning inability simply to find a domestic central bank governor (Slovenia), we would quickly rule out most of the new member states and are left precisely with Croatia and the three Baltic countries.

Among the Baltic governors, Gediminas Šimkus, who heads the Bank of Lithuania, is — at least today — relatively unknown, limiting his chances of a Board seat, even in the event that he gets another stint at his current institution when his term there ends on 6 April 2026.

His Estonian counterpart, Madis Müller, is even less recognized beyond the borders of his country, and his term at Eesti Pank, which ends on 6 June 2026, is non-renewable.

We therefore rule out Šimkus and Müller.

The name of Latvijas Banka Governor Mārtiņš Kazāks is more widely recognized, and the well-regarded Kazāks has the additional advantage of having secured a second five-year term early this year in a cliff-hanger reappointment.

He is not the only possibility, however. At the Croatian National Bank, Governor Boris Vujčić is an even more prominent candidate, and was also recently reappointed (in a somewhat less dramatic cliff-hanger).

Vujčić's long and distinguished central banking career may give him an edge, ceteris paribus. So too might the argument that Croatia is less well represented in Brussels than many others.

On the other hand, Croatia, a relative newcomer to the euro area (from 1 January 2023), could in this sense be at a disadvantage relative to Latvia, which joined in 2014 — timing that could prove decisive in a head-to-head.

We will not try to call it here, instead simply assuming that it makes the most sense for one of them to get Lane's position.

Even so, the decision will not hinge solely on individual merit. As before, we cannot disregard the potential for gender politics to lead to another outcome.

In such a case, the calculus would change entirely regarding whether a new member state would still come to the fore, gender balance having been an explicit factor in past appointments.

The flip side of that however is that giving a newer euro area country a seat could be framed as overdue recognition – a competing moral imperative. In the event, gender equality concerns might temporarily take a back seat.

Another potential hitch from the perspective of Kazāks and Vujčić might be if the former’s compatriot, longstanding European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis, is interested in a Board seat – as in fact is rumored to be the case.

Dombrovskis would clearly be a significant contender, given his impressive record of top positions and, correspondingly, a lengthy list of high-level contacts throughout Europe that he could presumably call on for support.

At the same time, he could be regarded as too political for such an appointment, the act of naming him seen as fraught with mutual back-scratching perceptions.

For the moment, he is a wildcard, and one that casts a long shadow.

As with other top EU appointments, the outcome could also be shaped by political horse-trading, the ECB Board just one piece of a larger puzzle of institutional posts.

In any case, we don't expect any of the three to assume Lane's current function. In contrast to the vice presidency, the office of chief economist is not a separately defined position in the EU Treaties.

It is instead a functional portfolio — specifically, the internal responsibility for economics and monetary policy analysis — assigned to one of the six members of the Executive Board.

That means that — as has happened before — it can be shifted around as needed. As a result, we would expect the mantle of chief economist to be given to someone else temporarily; current Board member Isabel Schnabel might be the most sensible choice, but that is secondary for present purposes.

In the end, the contest will be over the seat itself.

In the next instalment of this series, we will consider the subsequent Board vacancy, set to occur when President Christine Lagarde leaves exactly five months after Lane on 31 October 2027.