The Government has officially proposed to Congress , as the new president of the Independent Fiscal Responsibility Authority (Airef). This was approved by the Council of Ministers held this Tuesday, a week after the department led by Vice President María Jesús Montero confirmed that she was chosen to replace Cristina Herrero in office. The candidate must now obtain , an exam that is anticipated to be complicated not only for a basic reason of parliamentary arithmetic—the investiture bloc is cracked—but also for the doubts about the impartiality raised by the appointment.
Olóndriz was appointed in 2020 by Montero to occupy a key position in the Treasury, so she would end up evaluating policies in whose design she participated from the ministry, such as the proposed reform of regional financing or the elimination of community debt. For this reason, in recent days there have been voices who consider that his appointment damages the image of the institution, financial and personnel, and independent by law of the executive branch.
Criticism in this sense not only comes from the political arena, but also from the academic and legal world and from the Administration itself. The closest parallel is with José Luis Escrivá, who took the reins of the Airef in autonomy as the first president of the institution, but later passed directly. The relationship between the Government and the organization has also been strained in recent months due to the new examination on the sustainability of pensions demanded by the Executive and which the Airef has kept paralyzed, considering that the request .
On a technical level, however, there is consensus that Olóndriz meets the requirements of the position. Graduated in Economics and Business Sciences from the University of Barcelona, with an executive master’s degree in Public Administration from Esade and a certified financial analyst by the European Federation of Financial Analyst Societies (EFFAS), she has experience in both the public and private sectors. Since 1990, he held the position of senior analyst in the Sovereing & International Public Finance team at S&P Global Ratings between 2011 and 2020, covering local and regional governments and public entities in Spain and the United Kingdom.
Airef was created by European impulse more than a decade ago, after the rescue of the financial system, with the task of ensuring the sustainability of public accounts. Herrero was unanimously appointed president in Congress and had been at the head of the institution since the beginning of 2020 —the terms are six years without the possibility of extension—, where she previously held the position of director of Budget Analysis. The appointment of Olóndriz, which the Council of Ministers communicated to Congress this Tuesday, will specify; If this were not possible, a simple majority of the competent Senate committee would suffice.
