Vice-President, European Commission

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Moderator:

William R. Rhodes

President and CEO, William R. Rhodes Global Advisors, LLC.

Valdis Dombrovskis is the Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Euro and Social Dialogue, also in charge of Financial Stability, Financial Services and the Capital Markets Union.

His responsibilities include supervising the economic and fiscal policy coordination in the European Union, as well as developing and negotiating proposals to further strengthen Europe's Economic and Monetary Union. In this role, Vice- President Dombrovskis was involved in managing the 2015 Greek crisis, and is responsible for Macro-Financial Assistance programmes to Ukraine. As the EU finance chief, he is working on the completion of the Banking Union and on the setting up of a genuine Capital Markets Union for Europe by 2019. VP Dombrovskis leads the European Commission's initiatives related to the future of finance, including FinTech, crypto assets and sustainable finance.

Prior to becoming European Commission Vice-President, he served three consecutive terms as Prime Minister of Latvia, becoming the longest serving head of government in Latvia's history. Valdis Dombrovskis was Latvia's Minister of Finance from 2002 to 2004. He was twice elected a Member of the European Parliament (2014; 2004-2009) and Head of the Latvian Delegation in the European People's Party Group. He served as a Member of the Saeima (Parliament) of Latvia (March 2004 - June 2004; January 2014 - June 2014). Prior to joining politics, he worked as a senior economist and Chief Economist at the Bank of Latvia (1998-2002). Together with Anders Aslund, he co-authored the book "How Latvia came through the financial crisis", which was published in 2011.

Valdis Dombrovskis was born on 5 August 1971 in Riga, Latvia. He graduated with a degree in physics from the University of Latvia (1993) and economics from Riga University of Technology (1995). He received his master's degree in physics in 1995 from the University of Latvia. In 1995 -1998, he worked as a research assistant at Mainz University, Germany, at the Institute of Solid-State Physics in Latvia and at the University of Maryland (USA).