Speakers

Vladimír Mečiar (SK)
Vladimir Meciar is a Slovak politician and the former Prime Minister, first of Slovakia inside of Czechoslovakia, then, after December, 31 1992, of independent Slovakia.  He led the People’s Party – Movement for a Democratic Slovakia for more than 20 years.

Ivan Kocárník (CZ)
Ivan Kocárník is a Czech economist and former politician who served for the Civic Democratic Party. After the Velvet Revolution, he was a member of the Czechoslovak Parliament of the House of Peoples of the Federal Assembly. In the 1990s, he worked as Minister of Finance of the Czech Republic in Vaclav Klaus’ first and second government, and he was the Deputy Prime Minister and a member of the Chamber of Deputies.

Jan Oravec (SK)
Jan Oravec is a Slovak economist. He is the president of The Entrepreneurs Association of Slovakia. Since 2004 he has represented Slovak employers in the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels. He is also a co-founder of the web portal eu4liberty.eu.

Jiří Schwarz (CZ)
Jiří Schwarz is the director of CETA (Center for Economic and Market Analysis). In his work he focuses on the economy of regulation and public finances. He was a member of the National Economic Council of the Government (NERV) and the Dean of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Economics in Prague. He is Chairman of the Board of Directors of Anglo-American University in Prague.

Ján Tóth (SK)
Ján Tóth served as Chief Economist and Director of the Financial Policy Institute (IFP) of the Ministry of Finance. In 2012, he was appointed Deputy Governor at the National Bank of Slovakia.

Mojmír Hampl (SK)
Mojmir Hampl is a Czech economist and a member Banking Board of the Czech National Bank.  He has simultaneously served as Vice-governor of CNB since 2008.

Michael Smith (CZ, USA)
Michael L. Smith is a Researcher at the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He was previously a Researcher in the departments of economic sociology and social stratification at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He led the team www.politickefinance.cz, the database of Czech political party financing.

Oľga Gyárfášova (SK)
Oľga Gyárfášova has been a director at the Institute of European Studies and International Relations since 2016. She has focused her research on subjects such as;  voting behavior, political culture, public opinion. and minority rights and analysis of populism and right-wing extremism.

Milorad M. Miškovič (SB)
Milorad M. Miškovič has been living and working in Prague since 1993. For over two decades he has been working in the field of commercial and residential real estate development, real estate consultancy, and has been involved in a number of major developer projects.

Luc De Ceuster (BE)
Luc De Ceuster is a professor at Anglo-American University and an entrepreneur. He is particularly interested in the area of quantitative methods, operational management and project management.

Antoni Ferrando (ES)
Originally from Barcelona, Antoni Ferrando now lives in Prague working as a writer and a translator. He is a member of the Czech-Catalan Association and is actively interested in happenings in Catalonia and in our country.

Štefan Füle (CZ)
Štefan Füle is a Czech diplomat and politician. From May to November 2009, he was the Minister for European Affairs in the Government of Jan Fischer, and from February 2010 to October 2014, he served as the European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy.