Cyprus and Malta are minnows compared to other European economies, but at least one of their senior policymakers may make a splash at the European Central Bank if the countries join the eurozone next year, Reuters reported yesterday.

It said economists expect at least one of the countries’ central bank governors – Athanasios Orphanides of Cyprus – to punch above his weight on the ECB’s Governing Council.

Orphanides, 45, only took up his job in Cyprus on 3 May, and is little known at home. He spent his adult life in the United States, studying economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and latterly working as an adviser to the US Federal Reserve Board.

Reuters said less is known about the policy preferences of Michael Bonello, who has been Malta’s central bank governor since 1999, following a career as a trade economist with the United Nations.

His tasks – keeping down inflation via targeting a fixed exchange rate against the euro, and recently preparing Malta for euro entry – do not give a strong guide to how he would approach setting eurozone interest rates.

Mr Bonello said in March that he did not want to label himself as a hawk or a dove, and that he would take a pragmatic approach based on the macroeconomic environment.

He is concerned to tackle any one-off jump in inflation when the Maltese lira is exchanged for euros and to maintain the Maltese central bank’s political independence.

Either way, Mr Bonello will not be making many trips to Frankfurt for ECB meetings as he plans to retire when his term ends on 1 October 2008. There is no obvious successor.

Marco Kramer, co-head of European economics at UniCredit, did not expect Cyprus and Malta to shift the balance on the Governing Council, which usually works on a consensual basis rather than taking things to a formal vote.

“This is not the Eurovision song contest,” he said. “Smaller countries play a very active role but their impact is very small.”