ECB ethics panel cleared Centeno's TV slot and Abanca board seat
The ECB Ethics Committee's opinion of 19 May found that Mário Centeno's CNN Portugal commentary raises no conflict of interest and that his non-executive seat at Abanca Vida y Pensiones respects the six-month cooling-off rule. He pledged not to discuss monetary policy before 6 October 2026.
The European Central Bank’s ethics committee saw no problem with the two jobs Mário Centeno took after leaving the Bank of Portugal. Its opinion, sent to Christine Lagarde on 19 May, says his weekly commentary on CNN Portugal “does not raise and could not be perceived as raising” a conflict of interest, and that his seat as an independent non-executive director of the insurer Abanca Vida y Pensiones meets the required cooling-off period.
The document has only now become public, under the ECB’s rule of releasing these opinions with roughly a six-month delay.
What did the ECB decide about Mário Centeno?
One verdict for each role. On television, no objection, but a piece of advice: use prudence and judgement whenever he talks about matters tied to the ECB’s job. The committee welcomed Centeno’s own promise not to discuss monetary policy (interest-rate decisions, in plain terms) before 6 October 2026, a year after he left the ECB Governing Council. He has been a Monday-night commentator on the programme O Trigo do Joio since late May.
On the insurer, it came down to the calendar. The ECB code of conduct makes former Governing Council members wait six months before taking roles like this. Centeno’s term ended on 6 October 2025, so the clock ran out on 6 April 2026. He notified the committee on 30 April, and the opinion came 19 days later.
Why was the Abanca job controversial?
Because Galician banking group Abanca owns EuroBic, a Portuguese bank it bought outright in July 2024 after a deal announced in November 2023, while Centeno was governor. When the appointment came out in October, Centeno argued in an interview that Abanca was already being presented as EuroBic’s buyer when he arrived at the Bank of Portugal, that it was a deal between private parties, and that vetting the buyer was the ECB’s call.
The Frankfurt opinion has a limit it spells out itself: it does not cover the rules that bind Centeno as a former Bank of Portugal governor. Those are national, and stricter for anyone moving to a supervised firm. The Portuguese central bank’s own ethics committee also looked at the case in May.
This is not the ECB committee’s first look at Centeno. In 2023 it found that António Costa’s sounding him out for prime minister had not compromised his independence. And the bank he left keeps coming back to Parliament, as the row over its €192 million new headquarters showed.
Image: EU2016 SK / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
