Head of the Jean Monnet Activities and his relevant skill and experience

Mojmir Mrak is a full professor and Jean Monnet Chair holder (between 2012 and 2015) at the SEB LU who has been teaching on a regular basis also as a visiting professor at foreign universities (Austria, Italy and Montenegro). He has published extensively and has participated actively at numerous conferences, seminars and workshops on EU economic issues. Mojmir Mrak has been a member of Slovenian EU accession negotiation team as well as of the team negotiating the EU financial perspectives 2007-13 and 2014-2020. He is (co)author / coordinator of numerous national and several international research projects and consultancy assignments. Among others, Mojmir Mrak has been a consultant of the Slovenian government and governments of several other Western Balkan countries as well as of various UN and EU institutions, including the European Commission and the European Parliament.

In more specific terms, the summary of Mojmir Mrak’s relevant skill and experience is as follows:

• Close to 20 years of teaching experience in the areas EU economic integration and international finance. At the University of Ljubljana, I have been teaching courses on Economic Policies of the EU and International Finance both at under-graduate and graduate levels. In addition, I have been regular visiting professor at (i) the post-graduate program of the Wirtschaftuniversitat in Vienna (Austria), (ii) the MBA program at the University in Siena (Italy), and (iii) the MBA program at the university in Podgorica (Montenegro). In the period September 2012 – August 2015 I am a holder of a Jean Monnet Chair at the SEB LU.
• More than 25 years of experience in research and consultancy in the areas of international finance and EU economic integration issues. In the first part of this period most of my research and consultancy activities were in the areas of (i) international capital flows and external debt management, (ii) country risk assessment, and (iii) infrastructure financing, PPP and project financing, for clients in the former SFR Yugoslavia and in the Republic of Slovenia (government authorities and business, especially banking community). In addition, I have been a consultant of several international organisations, including IBRD, EBRD, IFC, Inter-American Development Bank and OECD. Over the last 18 years, my activities have focused on EU economic integration issues, such EU as accession, EU budget and medium-term financial perspective, structural funds and real convergence, and more recently especially on macroeconomic governance. Within this context, research projects and consultancy activities have been done for EU institutions, especially for the European Commission and the European Parliament, for other international institutions, such as the UNDP, as well as for a number of Governments (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia) and for several private sector consultancy firms from different EU member states (Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom).
• Around 20 of experience in designing and implementing Slovenian Government's policy in the areas of international finance and EU accession. In the period since independence of Slovenia, I have been directly involved in negotiations aimed at reaching separate agreements between Slovenia as a debtor and the three groups of its foreign creditors (multilateral financial institutions, the Paris Club and the London Club). Between 1992 and 1996, I was the chief external debt negotiator of the Republic of Slovenia. In addition, I was responsible for early credit arrangements of Slovenia with the EBRD and IBRD. Between 1997 and 2005, I had been chief advisor of the Slovenian Government on financial aspects of the country’s EU accession process. Within this framework, I was responsible for (i) negotiations about the financial package of Slovenia’s accession to the EU (between 2000 and 2002), and (ii) for the analytical back-up of the negotiations for the 2007-2013 financial perspective of the EU (between 2003 and 2005) as well as negotiations for the 2014-2020 financial perspective (between 2011 and 2013). Over the last 10 years, I have also been a member of the Supervisory Boards of the Slovenian Export Corporation (Slovenia’s ECA) and of the Nova Ljubljanska banka (the largest commercial bank in the country) as well as a member of the International Advisory Board of the Unicredit Bank, one of the largest European commercial bank. Between 2005 and 2009, I was a member of the “Knowledge for Growth” high level expert group formed by Commissioner Janez Potočnik.