The European Commission on Thursday appointed finance chief Olli Rehn as its number two, with special responsibility for the euro currency area. Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said the Finn, central to joint EU-IMF bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, would now be his right-hand man with responsibility for all economic and monetary affairs including the euro.
"Having a commissioner tasked especially with the euro shows that we want euro governance to happen within a communal framework," Barroso told the European parliament in Strasbourg. He was speaking hours after leaving a summit of eurozone leaders in Brussels that reached a late-night deal to hit banks with a 50-percent write-down on Greek debt, recapitalise some lenders and boost its bailout fund to a trillion euros.
Rehn "will have strengthened decision-making capacities," Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly added at a post-summit news conference back in Brussels. As well as the numbers, leaders moved to accelerate the process of eurozone integration. Rehn's new portfolio is seen by many, especially the Dutch who pushed hardest for the new role, as a precursor to the sort of eurozone-wide finance minister role outgoing European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet wants to see.
"It's fundamentally important but also from a symbolic point of view, and symbols are important," Barroso added. The job comes despite reservations by some states that Rehn could find himself cast in the role of judge and executioner - proposing proceedings be brought against states that repeatedly breach tightened commitments to partners on tightened deficit and debt thresholds, and administering fines if partners don't ride to the rescue. The deadpan official, a former lower-division Finnish football club chairman, previously oversaw the process of law convergence for wannabe entrants to the now 27-state union.
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