The finance ministers of the euro zone will vote, on Thursday, the 11th, on the new president of the Eurogroup after the departure of Irishman Paschal Donohoe, a position for which government officials from Greece and Belgium are competing.
Until the application deadline, two ministers (both center-right) presented their candidacy for the presidency of the Eurogroup: the Minister of Economy and Finance of Greece, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, and the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Budget, responsible for Administrative Simplification in Belgium, Vincent Van Peteghem.
The Portuguese Minister of Finance, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, was on the list of the European People’s Party to also run for the position, but decided not to do so in order not to create internal divisions in the center-right bench, according to sources linked to the process.
Today’s vote comes after the until now president of the Eurogroup, Paschal Donohoe, left, at the end of November, the position he held since 2020 and for which he was recently re-elected to become executive director of the World Bank.
Paschal Donohoe was first elected president of the Eurogroup in July 2020 and then re-elected in December 2022 and July 2025.
He succeeded in the position to Mário Centeno, who presided over the informal body, as Minister of Finance of Portugal, between January 2018 and July 2020.
In a statement released in Brussels, Paschal Donohoe described the “opportunity to hold the position of president of the Eurogroup” as “one of the greatest honors” of his professional life, recalling challenges such as the covid-19 pandemic, record inflation due to the war in Ukraine and new community priorities.
Meanwhile, Cypriot Finance Minister Makis Keravnos assumes the role of interim president of the Eurogroup, given the Cypriot presidency of the EU Council for the first half of 2026.
Any minister responsible for finance of a eurozone country can be elected president of the Eurogroup, and the candidate must be an effective member of the body at the time of the election.
The president of the Eurogroup chairs the meetings, establishes the respective agendas, draws up the long-term work program and represents the Eurogroup in international bodies.
The members of this body elect their president for a term of two and a half years by a simple majority of votes, that is, by at least 11 of the 20 votes.
If none of the candidates obtains at least this simple majority at the end of the first round, the candidates will then have the opportunity to withdraw their candidacy, and voting will continue until such a vote is reached.
The Eurogroup is an informal body created in 1997 and made up of ministers from member states of the single currency to closely coordinate economic policies.