Ivan Mikloš

Distinguished Associate Fellow for Economic Growth & Sustainability Programme

Ivan Mikloš is former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance of the Slovak Republic (2002-2006, 2010-2012), Deputy Prime Minister for Economy (1998-2002), and Minister of Privatization (1991-1992). He has co-founded and led the economic think tank MESA10 (1992-1998). Between 2006-2010 and 2012-2016, he was a Member of Parliament. In 2014, he was reappointed as the President of MESA10 and became a Member of the International Advisory Board of the National Reform Council of Ukraine and the platform VoxUkraine. During 2015-2016 he served as a Chief Advisor to the Minister of Finance of Ukraine and as an Advisor to the Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine. From April 2016 until August 2019, he served as a Chief Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ukraine. After the change of the government, from November 2019 until March 2020, he was in the position of an Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of Ukraine. In the years 2016-2020, he chaired the Strategic Advisory Group for Support of Ukrainian Reforms (SAGSUR). He is also Co-Founder of the Ukrainian economic think tank Centre for Economic Strategy.

Ivan Mikloš was one of the leading figures of economic transformation in the Slovak Republic. He significantly contributed to the entry of the Slovak Republic into the OECD and instigated an extensive and effective tax reform. He led the government agenda on economic restructuring and fiscal consolidation. The second Dzurinda´s government (2002-2006) gained a very reformist reputation thanks to severe austerity measures and a comprehensive program of structural reforms (tax, social sector, pension, healthcare, public finance, labour market) backed by Ivan Mikloš. Thanks to these reforms, Slovakia was able to join the Eurozone in 2009. In 2004, he was awarded “Best Minister of Finance of the Year” by Euromoney, and “Top Business Reformer” by the World Bank´s Doing Business report.

Ivan Mikloš is the author of “Book of Reforms” (2005), “Rewriting the Rule” (2001) and dozens of studies and articles in the expert and popular press. He is also the author of the chapter about Slovak reforms in the book “The Great Rebirth: Lessons from the Victory of Capitalism over Communism” (2014). In 2019, under his leadership, SAGSUR published the book about the Ukrainian reform process “Reforms in Ukraine after Revolution of Dignity: What was done, why not more and what to do next” (2019), to which he contributed the chapter “Political Economy of Reforms: Political system, governance and corruption”.