Dr Dušan Mramor, Minister of Finance, Slovenia

Dušan Mramor was born on 1 November 1953 in Ljubljana. In 1990 he received his doctorate from the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Economics, where he was full professor of finance until his appointment as Minister of Finance.

Dr Mramor has worked with numerous international institutions in research and teaching, has obtained the accredited senior appraiser licence from the American Association of Appraisers, and was a consultant to the World Bank. He was a visiting professor at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in the USA, at the Central European University in Budapest, and at the Wirtschaftuniversität in Vienna.

Dr Mramor was the first President of the Expert Council at the Agency for the Securities Market, and is a member of the Expert Council at the Slovenian Institute of Auditing, of the Co-ordinating Committee of the Slovenian Association of Economists and of the Slovenian Association of Accountants, Financial Consultants and Auditors. Before assuming ministerial office Dr Mramor was President of the University of Ljubljana’s Board of Directors and a member of the Prime Minister’s Strategic Economic Council.

EU acceding countries (ACs) have undergone profound economic transformation in the last 15 years. Closed uncompetitive economies have been transformed into open and modern economies. The scope of reforms has been impressive as well as its pace. Structural reform has been accompanied by a remarkable deployment of institutions that finally conform to the EU model. The transformation process maintained its momentum with the envisaged EU membership. There are a number of lessons to draw from implementing structural reform particularly from the determination, endurance and speed. Implementation of the structural policy agenda has not been simple nor without social cost. There are many successes as well as failures, but overall the result has been positive and the progress of implementing structural reform has been enormous. Nevertheless, ACs have still a long way to go in structural policy in country-specific areas if they want to accelerate the speed of closing the income gap between present and future EU member states.