BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Union chose Dominique Strauss-Kahn yesterday as its candidate to head the International Monetary Fund, putting the former French finance minister in line to take the job in October.
Portugal, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said Europe would support Strauss-Kahn after Spain's Rodrigo de Rato stepped down to spend more time with his family. The IMF board is expected to approve Europe's choice.
"We think he would be an excellent managing director of the IMF," said Portuguese Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, who led talks among euro nations.
Strauss-Kahn, 58, previously had been expected to challenge unsuccessful French presidential candidate Segolene Royal for the leadership of France's Socialist Party.
He said he would now work hard to convince other IMF members that he was the right person for the job.
"The coming period should be one of adapting the IMF to the new order created by the globalization of finance," Strauss-Kahn said. "The mission of the fund will have to be redefined, as will the respective places of different partners, notably in giving emerging countries the role they are due."
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Strauss-Kahn's international experience had helped him swiftly win support from other EU nations. Germany's Peer Steinbrueck said he was "the best candidate Europe had to offer."
Europe and the United States have divided the top jobs at the two major world financial institutions, with the EU picking the head of the IMF and the United States choosing the leader of the World Bank.
British Finance Minister Alistair Darling said that it was time for the system to change and that the IMF post should be open to candidates from other parts of the world.
"We think there needs to be an opportunity for all members of the IMF to make their own assessment as to individual candidates . . . and then, of course, pick the best candidate for the job," he told reporters.
"We don't believe that the situation whereby it is assumed that there will automatically be a European candidate for the IMF just as there is an American candidate for the World Bank is sustainable in the long term."
He said Britain would have liked more time to select someone, although he described Strauss-Kahn as a "credible" candidate.
Portugal's Teixeira dos Santos said that there was nothing to prevent another candidate from coming forward but that wider changes should be part of changes to national voting weights at the IMF and to governance at the IMF and the World Bank.
Lagarde said questioning how the IMF candidate was selected also should mean challenging the U.S. role in picking the World Bank president.
Europeans were unhappy at Paul Wolfowitz's slowness to heed calls to resign from the bank after an ethics scandal.
Edwin Truman, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, said Strauss-Kahn was "a plausible candidate," but was relatively inexperienced in international financial issues compared with previous IMF managing directors.
De Rato, for example, had a much longer tenure as Spain's minister of the economy than Strauss-Kahn had as France's minister of finance, Truman said.
A spokeswoman for the IMF said the agency's directors have not yet set a date for a vote on the next managing director. Truman said it could take place as soon as August.