Topic: Euro

Adam Posen

Adam S. Posen is president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Under his leadership, since January 2013, the Institute has grown to 42 world-renowned fellows and won global recognition – including being named North American Economics Think Tank of the Year by Prospect five years in a row (2016 thru 2020). From 2009 to 2012, Posen served as an external voting member of the Bank of England's rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). Posen served seven terms on the Panel of Economic Advisers to the US

Congressional Budget Office (2005-19), and co-authored Inflation Targeting with Bernanke, Laubach, and Mishkin while at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (1994-97). In April 2021, Foreign Affairs published his article, “The Price of Nostalgia: America’s Self-Defeating Economic Retreat,” where he provides an analysis of the US retreat from globalization. More recently, the Institute published this chart on the Global Economy after Brexit.

Jean-Claude Juncker

Jean-Claude Juncker was one of the founding fathers of the euro, a pioneer of European unification, and Prime Minister of Luxembourg. After 18 years in office, he stepped down in December 2013, as the longest-serving head of government of any European Union state and one of the longest-serving democratically elected leaders in the world.

Widely renowned to be a highly skilful mediator within the European Union, Jean-Claude Juncker was President of the Eurogroup between 2005 and 2013 and President of the European Commission between 2014 and 2019.

Elected to Luxemburg’s Chamber of Deputies for the Christian Social People's Party in 1984, Jean-Claude Juncker was immediately promoted to Jacques Santer's cabinet as Minister for Work. He was Luxembourg's Minister for Finances from 1989 to 2009. Juncker was a key architect of the Maastricht Treaty, and was largely responsible for clauses on economic and monetary union. A highly skilled economist, he held the roles of Governor of the World Bank, and the IMF. He became Prime Minister in 1995, and served two six-month terms as President of the European Council, in 1997 and 2005.

In 2006, Jean-Claude Juncker was awarded the 'International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen for his contribution as an "engine and pioneer of European unification". At the ceremony, former German Chancellor Kohl, recognised him as an optimist who had never doubted the European cause. He has also won many other awards including "European of The Year" and "European Banker of the Year".