Former Minister of Digital Transformation and Civil Service Jose Luis Escrivá took up his duties this Tuesday as Governor of the Bank of Spain and announced that the institution would review its own autonomy law with the aim of strengthening their independence.
After the criticism for his appointmentEscriva stressed that the proper functioning of democratic societies requires impartial institutions that exercise delegated powers within limited mandates, and argued for strengthen independence and transparency of the Bank of Spain.
To this end, he proposed review the autonomy law of 1994 by which the entity is governed and with this objective has already created a working groupchaired by the executive councilor Fernando Fernández -very close to the PP-, to reflect on the opportunity to introduce modifications to this rule.
This would involve reviewing aspects of the law which could “further strengthen” independence of the Bank of Spain, Escriva explained, which could include a review of the way the institution’s leadership is elected or an extension of the mandate beyond the current six years.
The new governor, who also praised his predecessor, Pablo Hernandez de Coshas also chosen to improve the Bank of Spain’s communication with society, explaining and justifying its activities. This involves not only regulatory elements, but also the adoption of best practices and the generation of an institutional culture that makes transparency an inspiring principle of our actions, he said, adding that this is the optimal way to be accountable to society.
According to Escriva, the Bank of Spain has made a lot of progress in this regard in recent decades, but there is still room for improvement and innovation with the aim of being more transparent. “And the more independent you are and want to be, the more you have to internalise the principles of transparency and accountabilityas fundamental legitimation mechanisms for an unelected power,” he said.
The new governor wants citizens to know more and better about the functions of the Bank of Spain and believes that the legitimacy of a central bank lies in the efficiency with which it fulfills the functions delegated to it by the elected powers. In this sense, the effort made by the Bank of Spain in recent years to submit certain areas of its operation to external evaluations has been “remarkable”, in Escrivá’s eyes, but he says that it can “go further”.
On the one hand, the independence of the evaluations will be strengthened by making the current Evaluation Office directly dependent on the Governing Council of the Bank of Spain. On the other hand, he indicated, the strategic plans resulting from these evaluations will be fully integrated into the bank’s medium-term budgetary planning.
