Sense and stability

The man behind the EFSF gets a top job at the Commission.

Being nominated for last year’s EVawards does not seem to have done lasting damage to the career of Maarten Verwey, who this week was appointed as a deputy director-general for economic and financial affairs (one of two) in the European Commission. 

When he moves from the Dutch finance ministry in September, he will still be only 41, which by the standards of the Commission is strikingly young for senior management, even if the advent of central and east Europeans has lowered the average.

Click Here: cheap all stars rugby jersey

Verwey was the architect of what became the European Financial Stability Facility, the eurozone’s ad-hoc bail-out fund, constructed hastily in May, in such a way as to keep the European Commission out of the loan and maintain the legal fiction that there would be no EU bail-outs.

Clearly neither he nor Marco Buti, the Commission’s director-general, is holding grudges. Cynics will note that the Commission’s department for eurozone problems now has an Italian director-general and a Dutch deputy director-general, which leaves them well-hedged for whichever nationality takes over at the European Central Bank.