Mariana Kotzeva was appointed Director General of Eurostat by the European Commission on 1 March 2018. She is the first woman at the helm of Eurostat.

Ms Kotzeva joined Eurostat as an Adviser Hors Classe to the Director General in 2012. Two years later, in 2014, she was appointed Deputy Director-General.

Prior to joining the European Commission, Ms Kotzeva was the Head of Bulgaria’s National Statistical Institute. She also held a number of high-level consulting posts in the Bulgarian and foreign administrations, and led international projects for the United Nations and the World Bank.

Ms Kotzeva has a Master's degree in economics and a PhD in statistics and econometrics. She also has an Executive Education training at Harvard Kennedy School.

Ms Kotzeva is an Associate Professor of Statistics at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia, Bulgaria.

President of Statistics Portugal (INE) since 2018. Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa and research fellow at CEG-IST (since 2003). Ph.D. in Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa (2001). Working with statistics and econometrics, his research focuses on applied microeconomics, labour economics, entrepreneurship, innovation, and policy evaluation. He has coordinated and participated in several national and European research projects and has published in international journals such as the Economic Journal, Research Policy, European Economic Review, Small Business Economics, and Labour Economics. He has been also member of the General Council of the National Agency for Qualification and Vocational Education and Training (2013-2017) and member of the Scientific Council for Employment and Training, Center for Labor Relations, Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security (2015-2017).

Athanasios C. Thanopoulos is the President of the Hellenic Statistical Authority since 2016 and the Chairman of the Partnership Group of the European Statistical System (elected in July 2022). He is also a member (appointed by the ESSC) of the ESAC.

He has studied at the University of Athens, the Toulouse School of Economics and the University of Pittsburgh.

Before being selected by an international selection committee of experts to lead the Hellenic Statistical Authority, he was a University teacher and professional researcher for more than 15 years teaching economics, econometrics and statistics in the USA, Greece and France.

He also served as an adviser on bank resolution, social insurance and public debt sustainability analysis with the Greek Council of Economic Advisers while he participated as an expert in the negotiations of Greece’s three economic adjustment programs on critical policy areas such as statistical governance, social security, pharmaceutical expenditure, public debt sustainability.

His scientific research spans over a wide range of topics such as DSGE models, public debt dynamics, social insurance reform, statistical governance, data analytics, statistical literacy and appears in prestigious international refereed scientific journals in economics, statistics data analytics and computer science such as the Journal of Public Economics, the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Applied Computing and Informatics, Remote Sensing, Statistical Journal of the IAOS, among others.

Dr. Jūratė Petrauskienė is Director General of Statistics Lithuania since November 2019 (since 2023 Statistics Lithuania. State Data Agency). She graduated from Vilnius University with a Master’s degree in Statistics and in 2011 obtained her PhD in Mathematics. She has been working in Statistics Lithuania since 2004, responsible for different domains of statistics: prices, quality management, development of new methods and technologies for production of official and experimental statistics, new data sources, implementation of GSBPM and successive reorganization of processes and the Organizational structure in the office. She is a deputy Chair of the Board of the Lithuanian Statistical Union. Under her leadership the new Law on statistics was initiated which attributed Statistics Lithuania also the role of a data steward in the country.

Dr. Jūratė Petrauskienė is an active member of the European Statistical System – for the period of 2021–2022 she was a member of the Partnership Group, since 2023 she has been appointed a member of the European Statistical Advisory Committee (ESAC) representing the ESSC. On the international scale, Dr. Jūratė Petrauskienė takes an active part with presentations, moderating and chairing discussions in various fora on the most topical issues for the statistical community. She is a Chair of the Scientific Programme of the 2024 IAOS conference in Mexico.

Mr Jean-Pierre Poncelet has a long experience in European statistics, having held various positions in Eurostat over the last 15 years.

He was assistant to Eurostat’s Director General for about 5 years before being appointed Head of Unit in charge of Government Finance Statistics and Quality.

Jean-Pierre was then Head of Unit in charge of statistics for administrative purposes in Eurostat, providing the Commission services with key figures relating to GNI and VAT Own Resources, as well as to Pensions and Remuneration of EU Staff.

He was appointed Director of the Standards Dissemination and Cooperation in the ESS as of 16th July 2023. He is also Acting Head of Unit in charge of Strategy and programming; ESS governance.

Aurel Schubert is currently Honorary Professor and lecturer at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and at the Vienna School of International Studies. He was also Chairman of the European Statistical Governance Advisory Board (ESGAB) until January 2024. He was Director-General of the European Central Bank’s Statistics Department between 2010 and 2018, Chairman of the Statistics Committee of the European System of Central Banks and of the Contact Group on Data of the European Systemic Risk Board, Co-Chair of the European Statistical Forum, and Vice Chairman of the Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics. Previously, Mr Schubert worked for 25 years at the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, 13 years as Director of Statistics. He has been member of several Austrian, European and international statistical bodies. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of South Carolina (USA) and a Master’s degree from the Vienna University of Economics and Business. He holds several Austrian and international advisory functions. He is the author of "The Credit-Anstalt Crisis of 1931”, and of more than 50 articles on central banking, statistics and monetary history.

Roxane Silberman background is quantitative sociology with publications in the domain of labor market, migrations and discrimination. She is Emeritus senior researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France and Honorary Professor at GENES (Groupe des Écoles Nationales d’Économie et de Statistique). Since the 90ies, she has played a major role in France in opening access to official and sensitive microdata. As the representative of researchers in economics

and social sciences from 2009 to 2019 and since 2020 as qualified expert nominated by the Ministry of Economy, she sits at the board of the National Council for Statistical Information (CNIS, Conseil National de l’Information Statistique). Since 2015 Roxane Silberman is Scientific Advisor for international affairs at CASD (French Secure Data Hub) providing remote access to confidential data particularly in the domain of official and administrative data. In March 2023, she has been elected chair of the European Statistical Advisory Committee. For her merits in scientific work, Ms Silberman was awarded by Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 2000.

Silke Stapel-Weber has over 30 years of experience in official statistics. Over this period, Silke has held various technical and management positions at the German Federal Statistical Office, the Publications Office of the European Union (EU) and as Director for macroeconomic statistics and prices at Eurostat.

Since February 2024, Ms Stapel-Weber is an Advisor to the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB). From February 2019 to January 2024, Silke Stapel-Weber was the Director-General for Statistics and the Chief Data Officer of the ECB. The Directorate General Statistics provides statistical products and services to the ECB, the European Systemic Risk Board, other European and International organisations and the public at large.

Ms Stapel-Weber represents the ECB in various professional bodies, including the Inter-Agency Group (which involves the UN, IMF, ECB, BIS, World Bank, OECD and the European Commission), the Irving Fisher Committee (as member of the IFC Executive) and in the G-20 context. Ms Stapel-Weber chairs the Statistics Committee and the Data Committee of the ECB and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.

Pádraig was appointed Director General of the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in May 2012. His term as Director General ends on 30 May 2024. He is married with three children.

He graduated from University College Dublin (UCD) with a Masters in Economics.

Pádraig began his career as a statistician with the CSO in November 1991, working in Structural Business Statistics, Statistical Methodology and Balance of Payments. Appointed Senior Statistician in 2001, Pádraig was responsible for the Labour Market and Social Inclusion Division. From 2007-2010, Pádraig was Director of Statistical Support & Innovation and Assistant Director General with responsibility for the Social & Demographic Statistics Directorate from 2010-2012.

He is a member of the:

• European Statistical System Committee (ESSC)
• United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) High Level Group for the Modernisation of Official Statistics, (Chair from November 2013 to March 2018)
• Chair of the Bureau of the Conference of European Statisticians (CES)
• National Statistics Board
• Civil Service Management Board

Dominik Rozkrut has been the President of Statistics Poland since 2016. Dr. Rozkrut is a member of the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC). He was elected as a member of ESS Partnership Group (PG) for 2018-2019 and chaired the work of the group in 2020-2021. Recently he was also involved in the PG TF on ESS Innovations and ESS work of the PG TF on revision of the European statistical law.

In 2021-22 he served as a member of the European Commission expert group on Facilitating the Use of New Data Sources for Official Statistics.

He is a member of the OECD Committee on Statistics and Statistics Policy (CSSP) and served as CSSP Bureau Vice-Chair (2020-2023). Moreover, he is a member of the UNECE Conference of European Statisticians (CES) and holds a Conference Bureau Vice-Chair function as well as participates in the work of UNECE High-Level Group on Modernisation of Official Statistics (HLG-MOS).

At the UN level, he represents Poland in the UN Statistical Commission. He also works in the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics (UN-CEBD), co-chairs the UN Data Stewardship Working Group and is engaged in data stewardship work at European level within UNECE Task Force on Data Stewardship. Since 2021 he represents the Region of Eastern Europe in the UN High-level Group for Partnership, Coordination and Capacity-Building for statistics for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (HLG-PCCB).

Starting from 2021 he became a member of the ISI-Committee on Agricultural Statistics (ISI-CAS).

In 2021, he was nominated for 2021-2023 as the President-Elect and 2023-2025 as the President of the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS).

Dr. Rozkrut's career began at the Department of Statistics and Econometrics at the University of Szczecin. At the same time, he also worked as a member of a market risk management team at a commercial bank. He joined official statistics in 2007 and served as Director of a regional branch, acting as project manager for numerous research and development projects. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Szczecin, where he received his Ph.D. in statistics and econometrics.

He completed an internship at the University of Massachusetts, Lappeenranta University of Technology, and UNU-MERIT in Maastricht. Dr. Rozkrut is a member of the Main Council of the Polish Statistical Association, member of the Committee of Statistics and

Econometrics and the Committee on Demographic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Paula Brito is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto, and member of the Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support Research Group (LIAAD) of INESC TEC, Portugal. She holds a doctorate degree in Applied Mathematics from the University Paris Dauphine, and a Habilitation in Applied Mathematics from the University of Porto. Her current research focuses on the analysis of multidimensional complex data, known as symbolic data, for which she develops statistical approaches and multivariate analysis methodologies. She has been involved in two European research projects and coordinated the Portuguese participation in the H2020 FinTech project. Paula Brito was president of the International Association for Statistical Computing (IASC-ISI) in 2013-2015. She has authored a large number of papers in highly ranked journals in her field, has been invited speaker at several international conferences, is regularly member of international program committees, and has been chair of the international conferences COMPSTAT 2008 and IFCS 2022.

Pedro C. Magalhães (PhD, Political Science, The Ohio State University, 2003) is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, Portugal. He does research on public opinion, electoral behavior, and judicial politics, with particular emphasis on the study of public attitudes towards democracy and political institutions. His research has been published in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, Comparative Political Studies, and many others. He is one of the founders of the Portuguese Election Study and served as member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Social Survey and of the Planning Committee of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project. He is currently the director of PASSDA-Production and Archive of Social Science Data, part of the Portuguese Roadmap of Research Infrastructures, and a member of the Portuguese Statistical Council.

Maria Rosario Oliveira Martins is Full Professor of Statistics at IHMT-NOVA University of Lisbon, where she is teaching Statistics, Econometrics and Research Methods. She is coordinating the PhD Program in International Health and the postgraduate program in Statistics Applied to Health. She is the Director of the IHMT Global Public Health Unit and President of the IHMT Pedagogical Board; she is also leading the Population Health Policies and Services research group at Global Health and Tropical Medicine R&D Center. She is Member of the European Mathematical Society Ethics Committee. She was Principal Investigator of more than 25 R&D Projects award by national and EU funds, and she supervised more than 70 Master and 15 PhD Theses. She is author/co-author of 6 books and published more than 100 papers in scientific journals. She was awarded with the gold medal for Human Rights in 2020 by the Portuguese Parliament.

Claudia Junker is leading the Eurostat Task Force on “Peer reviews and quality” since 1 January 2019. Before that she was the head of the unit “Quality management and government finance statistics” from 1 July 2017 to 31 December 2018 and of the unit “Statistical cooperation” from 1 September 2010 to 30 June 2017. In both units dealing with quality she was responsible for the development of standards for the European Statistical System, such as the European Statistics Code of Practice (adopted in 2017), the European Statistical System Quality Assurance Framework (adopted in 2019), the European Statistical System Handbook on quality and metadata reports (adopted in 2020) and others. Furthermore, she is responsible for the implementation of these standards in Eurostat and for supporting the EU Member States and other countries in applying these standards. Since 2019 she is also leading the work on managing and implementing the third round of peer reviews in the European Statistical System and is herself heavily involved in conducting peer reviews, and harmonising the outcome of the peer reviews. As part of promoting quality in the European Statistical System and beyond, she was a co-chair and member of the Programme Committee for the 2018, 2020 and 2022 Quality conferences. Furthermore, this work also includes supports to third countries for improving the quality of their statistics with a focus on the countries having applied or willing to apply to become an EU Member State as well as countries in the European Neighbourhood to the East and the South. She is also an active member of the UN expert group on quality assurance frameworks.  Claudia also worked in business statistics and was leading the evaluation activities of Eurostat. Prior to joining Eurostat in 1999 she worked in the Statistical Office of Germany in the area of national accounts / input-output tables and managed a wide range of technical assistance projects and training programmes for countries in Central Europe and for countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet Union). Claudia holds a master degree in economics, informatics and management.

Maria João is member of the Board of Statistics Portugal (INE) since January 2018, after having served as the Director of the Planning, Control and Quality Unit at INE, since 2007. She started working at INE as a statistician in economic agriculture statistics in 1990.  She has been involved in Quality Management at the ESS since 1999, being member of several groups and having participated in the LEG on Quality and on the Sponsorship on Quality. She has also been involved in the preparation of European quality tools such as the ESS QAF, the revision of the European Statistics Code of Practice and in the methodology of the Peer Review exercises.  She has been a trainer in the field of quality in statistics at ESS level since 2001 and has also experience in international cooperation in the area of systematic quality management. She has chaired the Council Working Party on Statistics in 2021, during the Portuguese Presidency of the EU. She is actively involved in the current round of Peer Reviews in the ESS, chairing one of the teams of Peer Review Experts. She has been a member of the Programme Committee for several editions of the European Quality Conference.

Avis Benes has a longstanding career in international and EU institutions (European Commission, EEAS, EU Delegations, monitoring missions), in particular in political, economic, communication and statistical domains, including significant experience in EU enlargement and accession process.

Since 2018 she was heading the Eurostat unit dealing with statistical cooperation, in particular with enlargement and neighborhood countries as well as cooperation with Africa. In all areas of cooperation quality in statistics had continuously a prominent place, and next round of peer reviews in enlargement countries has been planned to commence in 2024.

On 1 January 2024 she is taking over the “Strategy, programming and ESS governance” unit in Eurostat, which  also includes the former task force peer review and team dealing with quality in Eurostat.

She holds MA degrees in economics and international relations & European studies.

Véronique van der Zande began her work at Eurostat in 2001 and joined Eurostat’s “Task Force on Peer reviews and quality” in the beginning of 2019. Since then, she has been very active in quality and her tasks covered a.o. the preparation and implementation of the third round of peer reviews and the contract for the communication campaign around it, the publication of the ESS Handbook for quality and metadata reports, the follow-up of quality projects in the enlargement countries and the organisation of seminars promoting of ESS quality frameworks and standards to non-EU countries. Before joining the task force, she worked in several other services at Eurostat and the European Commission, covering mainly statistical cooperation and business statistics.

Monika Wozowczyk is deputy head of the unit for methodology and innovation in official statistics at Eurostat. The unit provides methodological support for official statisticians across the EU, manages the European Master in Official Statistics and the European Statistical Training Programme, and organises access to confidential data for researchers. The unit also leads Eurostat’s workstrand on statistical innovation. It coordinates Eurostat’s work on Trusted Smart Statistics, experimental statistics and on the ESS Innovation agenda and it runs a number of innovative projects for development and enhancement of official statistics, such as the Web Intelligence Hub.

Before joining the unit, Monika contributed to Eurostat’s work on data quality improvements and methodological developments in a range of statistical fields, including environmental economic accounting, government finance statistics and labour market statistics.

Pedro Campos is currently Director of the Unit of Methodology of the Department of Methodology and Information Systems, at Statistics Portugal.

Pedro has PhD in Business Sciences from the University of Porto (2008) and is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto where he teaches courses in the areas of Data Analysis, Data Mining and Information Systems in various study cycles.  Pedro is Deputy-Director of the International Statistical Literacy Project, where he plays international roles in promoting statistical literacy. He is also a member of LIAAD (Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Analysis) at INESC TEC).

Magda is the Head of the Planning, Control and Quality Unit at Statistics Portugal (INE) since 2018 and she has been working in this unit since 2007. She started at INE as a statistician in the Development and Promotion of Products of the Statistical Information Unit in 1997.

She regularly participates in national and international working groups, as well as cooperation projects. She is, since 2019, Co-trainer on the ESTP Course – Quality Management in Statistical Agencies – Introductory Course.

Quality has been one of her areas of greatest interest, particularly the application of the GSBPM at INE.

She has a Degree in Mathematics, a Master Degree in Statistics and Information Management and a Post-graduation in Data Mining and Data Analysis.

She holds a master degree in Economics. Her adventure with statistics began in 1996. Since 2008, she has been dealing with quality in statistics, coordination in the areas of methodological issues and statistical disclosure control. She takes part in regular monitoring of implementation of the ES Code of Practice in Statistics Poland. In 2011, during the Polish presidency in the Council of the EU, she acted as deputy chair of the Working Party on Statistics. She was involved in the 2nd round of the ESS peer reviews exercise and during the 3rd round she was a national coordinator. She’s a member of the ESS Task Force on Peer Reviews set up by Eurostat in 2019 and a member of the Directors of Methodology Group (DIME).  She was co-chair of the Q2018 Conference in Cracow and in 2022 she was involved in Q2022 Conference in Lithuania as a Programme Committee member.

Giorgia Simeoni is the Istat Quality manager since September 2020. She works for Istat since 2001, always in the field of quality and reference metadata. She has been responsible for implementing quality reporting at Istat, and since 2018 she is responsible for the official Istat information system for the quality of statistical processes.  She has been involved in national, European and international quality related working groups, task forces and cooperation projects. She has been a trainer in ESTP courses: in particular, since 2016, she is one of the trainers of the "Advanced course on quality reporting". She was a member of the Q2022 Conference Programme Committee.

She is graduated in statistics, demographic and social sciences and holds a master degree in sources, tools and methods for social research.

Thomas Burg holds a masters degree in Mathematics achieved at Technical University of Vienna. After starting his professional career in in the private sector, in 1993 he joined Statistics Austria, where he gained 15 years-experience as methodological expert. In 2008 he was appointed as quality manager of Statistics Austria, and in 2019 he took the responsibility for the unit for Quality Management, Methods and Classifications. Since a reorganisation of Statistics Austria in 2022 he holds the position of the Center for Methodology and in February 2023 he was appointed as deputy of the Director General Statistics. Since 2017 he is a member of the Board of the Austrian Statistical Society. Besides his activities on European level as Austrian representative of the Directors of Methodology Group (DIME) and the Working Group Quality, he is involved in several projects and task forces developing relevant issues for quality and methodology within the European Statistical System. After being involved in the design of the 2nd and 3rd round of Peer Reviews, he acted  as active Peer in the third round. His current interests cover the integration of new data sources into the statistical production process, the development, application and dissemination of quality guidelines and quality standards for various topics relevant for official statistics., and the development and design of metadata systems. He acted as project leader and co-chair of the Program Committee when Statistics Austria and Eurostat organized the European Conference on Quality in Statistics in Vienna 2014 (Q2014), and was a member of the Program Committee for the conferences in Helsinki (Q2010), Madrid (Q2016), Cracow (Q2018) and Vilnius (Q2022).

Kornélia Mag was elected as the Deputy President of the Hungarian Statistical Society this year. She worked for the Hungarian Central Statistical Office for nearly twenty years. During this period she took different positions in HCSO as Deputy President responsible for Architectural Services (IT, Methodology and research), Chief Advisor to the President, Head of Methodology Department and Quality Manager of HCSO.

She earned her degree in Applied Mathematics from the Ethos Lóránd University in Budapest. She was a member of the Program Committee for the quality conferences in Budapest (Q2020- cancelled), Vilnius (Q2022).

Silvan Zammit has dedicated over 20 years to the National Statistics Office in Malta, now serving as Director for Data Resources, IT, and Methodology. His responsibilities encompass a broad spectrum, including the Census of Population and Housing, data quality assurance, and information security. Having graduated in Mathematics, Statistics, and Operations Research from the University of Malta in 2002, Mr. Zammit's passion for statistics motivated him to pursue postgraduate studies in Actuarial Techniques, which deepened his practical understanding of uncertainty and risk. Mr. Zammit also shares his expertise as a Lecturer at the University of Malta, teaching Official and Business Statistics in various faculties. His extensive experience in lecturing, conducting training, and serving as a technical expert in international thermic fora equips him to effectively engage with individuals, address their needs, and bridge the gap between statistical theory and practical application, thus promoting statistical literacy.

Iscte - University Institute of Lisbon and Center for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte), Lisboa, Portugal

Ph.D. in Sociology, Associate Professor with Aggregation at Iscte’s Department of Social Research Methods and integrated researcher at the Center for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-Iscte).

Her primary research areas encompass social research methodologies, adult education, competencies, and science and society. She has coordinated and participated in numerous research projects funded by national and international agencies, and by private and public organizations. She is the author and co-author of nearly a hundred scientific publications, including books, book chapters, and articles in indexed journals. With extensive teaching experience, she has coordinated and taught numerous courses in sociology and data analysis at the undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels.

Currently, she is the Director of Iscte’s Sociology Ph.D. Program, coordinator of CIES’s “Education and Science" Research Group, member of the Iscte General Council and member of the Statistical Council (representing CRUP), where she chairs the Permanent Section on Social Statistics.

Pedro Raposo is a consultant at Statistics Portugal, and he is an associate professor of Econometrics and Labor Economics at CATÓLICA-LISBON. He obtained his PhD in Economics from Tilburg University.

Previously, Pedro taught at ISEGI (UNL), where he completed a master's degree in Statistics, and worked in the financial sector at SIBS, after his undergraduate studies in Economics at ISEG (UTL).

His works are published in top journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Human Resources, Labor Economics and Economics Letters.

Remi Prual has been involved in the enhancement of the quality of official statistics for more than 20 years via numerous projects and activities. He was the Quality Manager and Head of General Department in Statistics Estonia (in between 2004-2017). He has been a Board Member of the Estonian Association for Quality for two consecutive periods. Remi belonged to the ESS Quality in Statistics WG, also to ESS Steering Committee on Quality and task forces on metadata standards, quality reporting, fine tuning of QAF, EU CWPS presidency team etc. Currently he is a ESS peer reviewer, management consultant, strategic advisor, trainer and expert with dedicated focus on valuation of data, metadata, statistics, information and knowledge. Remi is certified as an expert for ISO9001, EFQM, CAF, ITIL, LEAN and several other quality management related standards and approaches. He holds Masters in Information Sciences and also in Information Management.