Poland is pushing for Marek Belka, outoging governor of the National Bank of Poland (NBP), to takeover as head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), local media reported on February 23.

Belka’s term as the governor of the NBP ends in June. He burned his bridges with the new Law & Justice government ahead of the Andrzej Duda's victory in May's presidential vote and the party's win in the October parliamentary elections. It has long been clear Belka would not be invited back for another term at the head of Poland's central bank.

The tenure of Suma Chakrabarti as the head of the EBRD is up in July. This has spurred Polish officials to start to lobby for Belka to take the reins at the development bank,  Puls Biznesu reports.

“There only is one person in Poland that we can build national and international support for, and that is Marek Belka,” a government source told the newspaper. Belka himself has reportedly agreed to the idea.

Contrary to the Law and Justice (PiS) government’s reputation of supporting only trusted people from its own camp, key PiS politicians – chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, as well as ministers of energy and finance – are all in favour the newspaper claims. At the same time, it would send one of their stauchest critics to concentrate on international, rather than domestic, issues. Belka is also likely to receive support from around the CEE region.