Cantillon: Same Noonan, different finmins to meet

Who’d be a euro zone finance minister? The economy is torrid, political conditions are no better, and job security is in short supply. It’s no small measure of the prevailing uncertainty that Michael Noonan is now the second-longest serving FinMin in the single currency area.

Noonan has been in Merrion Street since the Government took office in March 2011, some 30 years after he first entered the Dáil. Only Wolfgang Schäuble of Germany, in office since 2009, has served longer in the euro group of ministers.

They’re all back in Brussels tonight for yet more talks on Greece, the starting point of the sovereign debt debacle and its epicentre still. As Noonan put it to the Oireachtas finance committee on Tuesday night, certain preliminaries must be disposed of before the real talking begins. “As usual there’s a huge turnover of finance ministers,” he told the committee. “At this meeting, there’ll be a number of new finance ministers that I need to say hello to and introduce myself to and try and establish some kind of relationship.”

This presents challenges. “There are 18 euro group countries. I’m there three years last March and I’m second most senior in there now. I’m on my seventh Greek finance minister. I’m not making a joke. I’m just saying it’s very hard to build working relationships when there’s such a turnover of ministers.”

It follows that the finance department in Athens is no place for ministers with aspirations to serve long-term. In Noonan’s account, it all serves to reinforce the powers of the permanent bureaucracy. “It’s the fault of the member states for not having greater longevity for the terms of office for their individual ministers,” he said.

“It seems to be a practice in Europe to move people very quickly from governments. It’s not because they’re fired. They’re just moved on to another ministry and two years would be considered quite a significant period in an individual ministry.”

Given the lack of ministerial mileage, is it any wonder that the European economy is in such bad shape?