Spain's minister Nadia Calvino has sufficient support of EU governments to become next head of the European Investment Bank, Belgian EIB chairman Vincent Van Peteghem said on Friday.

Europe's antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said in a statement on X that she had withdrawn her candidacy.

"I am grateful and honored to get the support of my fellow finance ministers to be at the helm of the European Investment Bank," Calvino said.

She added that the EIB, the financial arm of the European union and the largest public development bank in the world, will have an even more important role going forward to fund the green transition, to provide financial support for the rebuilding of Ukriane and to support the role of Europe in the world.

Calvino, 55, has been Spanish economy minister, a post that in Spain encompasses many aspects of public finances, since June 2018, when Pedro Sanchez first became prime minister.

Politically independent and widely seen as a technocrat, she is a career civil servant and is not a member of Sanchez's Spanish Socialist Workers Party.

(Reporting by Charlotte Van Campenhout; Editing by Benoit Van Overstraeten and Geert De Clercq)