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Atanas Pekanov
Senior Adviser, Brussels
Atanas Pekanov is an economist at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) in Vienna with a focus on monetary and fiscal policy and EMU architecture. In 2021 and again throughout 2022-2023 he served as the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria. He was in charge of the management of EU Funding (MFF), the Bulgarian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), Cohesion and Regional Funding and the co-coordination of the euro adoption process.
His focus was on negotiating and then implementing the Bulgarian RRP and its investments and reforms related to the energy, transport and other sectors. He is currently also a Lecturer in Economic Policy at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (Wirtschaftsuniversität Vienna), where he obtained his PhD.
His research interests revolve around monetary and fiscal policy, the EU Budget (MFF), the EMU architecture, the Capital Markets Union.
Previously he has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and visited the Harvard Economics Department, was a scholar to the Bulgarian National Bank twice and has worked at the European Central Bank.