Euro-Parliament to audition ECB candidate Mersch after all

(BRUSSELS) - The European Parliament will hold a US-style confirmation hearing later this month for Luxembourg central bank chief Yves Mersch, the nominee for a seat on the ECB's executive board.

A parliament spokesman told AFP the hearing would take place on October 22, after the legislature's economics committee initially refused to stage the audition in protest to the absence of female representation at the European Central Bank.

"Yes we will now have it on the 22nd (of October) in Strasbourg," the spokesman said.

A rift had grown between the Parliament and the 17 eurozone member states since finance ministers nominated Mersch in July.

A Parliament spokesman had said last week that the heads of the conservative, socialist and other groups could "force the economics committee to hold a hearing."

In Luxembourg earlier this week during finance ministerial talks, sources said that European Union leaders could force the appointment through regardless of the Parliament's wishes at a summit on October 18-19.

Committee chair Sharon Bowles last week pointed out that it was within the Parliament's right to object to an appointment against its wishes and "take this to the European Court of Justice."

The European Commission recently proposed quotas for women in boardrooms across the EU but the issue has been got caught up in the Mersch appointment, with tempers fraying.

The last woman on the ECB board was Austria's Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell between 1998 and 2011.