European Union finance ministers agreed Tuesday to back French candidate Dominique Strauss-Kahn as new head of the international Monetary Fund, the EU's Portuguese presidency said.

"Ecofin agrees to support Dominique Strauss-Kahn for IMF director," the presidency said, using EU shorthand for the meeting of finance ministers in Brussels Tuesday.

 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative, had named Strauss-Kahn, a Social Democrat, who failed to win his party's presidential nomination in the 2007 election, as his favorite candidate. Strauss-Kahn served as French finance minister in the past.

 

The nomination means that Strauss-Kahn is likely to get the job since under an informal agreement, Europe chooses the head of the IMF while the US picks the leader of the World Bank.

  

In a surprise announcement late last month, current IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato said that he would step down in October.