The purpose of ESGAB is to provide an independent overview of the European Statistical System as regards the implementation of the European Statistics Code of Practice. The ESGAB has been established to enhance the professional independence, integrity and accountability of the European Statistical System, key elements of the Code of Practice, as well as to enhance the quality of European statistics.

The members of the Board have been selected from among experts possessing outstanding competence in the field of statistics. The members perform their duties on the Board in a personal capacity and must act independently. The members on three-year-terms between 1 February 2021 and 31 January 2024 are:

Mr Aurel Schubert (Chairperson)

Via the several national as well as European and international senior functions in the area of official statistics, Mr Schubert has a long and thorough experience as well as interest in the area of (European) official statistics, as producer, as user and as far as governance issues are concerned. In addition, he has extensive experience in the area of international cooperation in official statistics. More specifically, Mr Schubert has been leading the efforts for the cooperation between the two European statistical systems, resulting in a Memorandum of Understanding between the European Statistical System (ESS) and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). Mr Schubert has extensive experience in chairing European committee, like the Statistics Committee of the ESCB, in adapting statistical systems to new user demands and in the area of communicating official statistics. Between 2010 and 2017, he was a member of the European Statistical Advisory Committee (ESAC).

Mr Schubert is Honorary Professor for Economics and lecturer at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, as well as at the Vienna School of International Studies. He is an Elected Member and serves on the Council of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), and an Honorary Member of the Austrian Statistical Society. He is the author of a book and more than 50 articles in the areas of European monetary integration, financial history, and statistics.

The previous professional career of Mr Schubert includes positions of Director General for Statistics at the European Central Bank (2010 to 2018) and of Director of Statistics in Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB, 1997 to 2010). He was also the Head of Foreign Research Division, and Assistant the Head of Secretariat of the Executive Board and Public Relations in the OeNB, and a Visiting Trainee at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Mr Schubert is Austrian, born in Hungary. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of South Carolina (USA), and a Master’s in Business Administration from the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Mr Kai Carstensen

Prof. Dr. Kai Carstensen is full professor of econometrics and director of the Institute for Statistics and Econometrics at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel since 2014. From 2020 to 2022 he serves as Dean of the Faculty of Economics, Business and Social Sciences. He is also a CESifo research network fellow and an external research professor at the IFO Institute in Munich.

Before that he was full professor of Economics at the University of Munich (LMU) from 2007 to 2014 and visiting scholar at the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan in 2013. From 2007 to 2014 he also served as head of the Business Cycle Analysis and Surveys Department at the IFO Institute and from 2005 to 2007 as senior researcher and coordinator for the Research Program “Business Cycles, Growth and Macroeconomic Policy” at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Business Cycle Measurement and Analysis and serves as an associate editor of Economics – The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal.

Mr Carstensen has advised various policy makers in Germany, e.g. the Federal Ministry of Economics, the Bundestag, the Bavarian government and several Parliaments of the Federal States of Germany. From 2011 to 2013 he served as scientific member in a committee (“Enquetekommission”) of the Bundestag on ”Growth, Prosperity, Life Quality – Ways Towards Sustainable Economic Activity and Societal Progress in the Social Market Economy” which was established as a reaction to the Great Recession and the euro crisis.

He has published widely in the fields of empirical macroeconomics, econometrics, and forecasting.

Mr Carstensen holds a Doctorate (PhD) and a Diploma (Master) in Economics from the Christian Albrechts University at Kiel and a Habilitation in Economics and Econometrics from the same University.

Mrs Daniela Cocchi

Ms Cocchi is bringing to ESGAB her skills related to the new ways of data collection, experimental statistics, privacy in statistics, environmental statistics and sustainable development goals indicators.

Ms Cocchi is a professor of statistics at the University of Bologna. Between 1987 and 1994, she was an associate professor at the same University.

She has been President of the Italian Statistical Society (June 2004-June 2008), of the International Environmetrics Society (September 2008-August 2011) and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. She has been member of several other bodies, such as the Council of ISTAT (January 2016-January 2020) and COMSTAT (March 2015-April 2019), and coordinates the ISTAT Advisory Committee on Statistical Methods (since February 2017).

Besides that, she is an expert in evaluation of academic careers and scientific projects, acting in the past as Head of the National Committee for National Scientific Qualification (November 2016-October 2018), as Head of the National Selection Committee for the Research Projects PRIN 2017, Sector SH3, and as a Member of the National Committee of the Research Guarantors/Comitato Nazionale dei Garanti per la Ricerca (CNGR) (April 2012-April 2014).

Ms Cocchi holds a PhD in statistics from the University of Louvain la-Neuve (Belgium). She is an Italian national.

Mr Priit Potisepp

He is the former Director General of Statistics Estonia (2004-2012). During this period, he was also the member of the European Statistical System Partnership Group and the Bureau of the Conference of European Statisticians of the UN.

In 2014 and 2015, he was directly involved in the conduct of the second round of peer reviews on the implementation of the European Statistics Code of Practice being the Chair of review teams in Bulgaria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Ireland and Switzerland.

From 2016-2020, Priit Potisepp was the head of Finance unit in the Permanent Representation of Estonia to the EU in Brussels, a diplomat responsible for economic and financial affairs. During the Council Presidency in 2017, he chaired the respective Council working party and represented the Council of EU vis-a-vis the European Parliament in the negotiations between the co-legislators of the EU. After returning from the diplomatic service, he worked in government state budget office in Estonia.

Priit Potisepp has also been engaged in academic work by teaching organization development at Tallinn Technical University between 2014 and 2016.  He worked also in the field of financial services (life insurance, retail banking) in Estonia before entering the world of official statistics.

Mr Andreas Vasileios Georgiou

The European Statistics Code of Practice is part of EU law. My commitment to it is demonstrated by my experiences and work as a statistician and as an academic.

From 2017, Mr Georgiou has been a Visiting Lecturer and Visiting Scholar at Amherst College in the United States. He was the President of the Hellenic Statistical Authority from 2010 to 2015. Prior to that, he worked at the International Monetary Fund for 21 years.

Mr Georgiou holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan. He earned his BA degree in Economics and Political Economy and Social Thought graduating Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Amherst College.

He has been a member of numerous intergovernmental and professional bodies, such as the Council of the International Statistical Institute (since 2019), American Statistical Association Committee on Professional Ethics in Statistics (2018 -2020), International Statistical Institute (from 2013), Partnership Group of the European Statistical System (2012-2014), European Statistical System Committee (2010-2015), Bureau of the European Statistical Forum (2013-2015), Editorial Board of the European Statistical System Report (2014-2015), Sub-Committee on Statistics of the Economic and Financial Committee of the EU (2014-2015) and Chairman of the Council Working Party on Statistics during the Greek Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2014.

Mr Georgiou teaches statistical ethics. His professional research and publishing in recent years has focused on statistical ethics, on institutional and legal frameworks for national and supranational statistical systems, and on the European Statistical System.

In 2018, he was awarded a commendation “to acknowledge his upholding of the highest professional standards in his public service in the pursuit of integrity of statistical systems” presented to him by the International Statistical Institute, Royal Statistical Society, American Statistical Association, International Association for Official Statistics, Federation of European National Statistical Societies and Société Française de Statistique.

Prof. Juan Manuel Rodríguez Poo

Official European statistics today show a double aspect that needs to be promoted: a legal-institutional profile of utmost importance and the necessity to understand and address the profound changes taking place in theoretical statistics. The Code of Practice presents in a very balanced way that double technical-institutional scope. My combined experience in governance of regional and national official statistics and as academic and researcher, in the field of statistics and econometrics, could be my main asset and my best contribution to ESGAB.

Juan Manuel Rodriguez Poo (Santander, 1964) has a Ph.D. in Economics and Business Administration from the Catholic University of Louvain and from the European Doctoral Program in Quantitative Economics (Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE), London School of Economics, University of Bonn and Ecole de Haut Études en Sciences Sociales (EHSS)). He has a degree in Economics and Business Administration (specializing in Quantitative Economics) from the University of the Basque Country and holds an MSc. Science in Economics from the Catholic University of Louvain. In the research field, since his doctoral training, his areas of interest have been non-parametric and semi-parametric regression estimation techniques. More precisely, he is interested in the application of these techniques to the field of microeconomics, labor economics, and microstructure problems within the field of financial economics and impact analysis and evaluation. He has carried out research stays at various universities, highlighting: the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE); London School of Economics; Center for Research in Economics and Statistics (CREST); Institute for Statistics, and Okonometrie. Humboldt University zu Berlin and the University of Ferrara and the Department of Econometrics and Statistics of the Carlos III University of Madrid (2000). As a result of this research activity, Prof. Rodriguez Poo has made numerous publications, has directed different research projects, and has also consulted both regionally and nationally. Regarding teaching, since 2003 he is a Professor of Econometrics, first at the University of Zaragoza and from 2005 at the University of Cantabria. Previously he was an Associate Professor at the universities of the Basque Country and Cantabria. He has also been a visiting professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin (2001), at the Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse (2002), and the University of Geneva (2015). All the teaching activities have focused on the field of Econometrics and Statistics. In the field of Official Statistics, in 2004 he was named the first director and founder of the Cantabrian Institute of Statistics, a body dependent on the Regional Government of Cantabria, and from 2008 to 2011 he was also vice president of the Interterritorial Statistics Committee. Subsequently, in 2018, he was appointed president of the National Statistics Institute (INE), a position in which he has remained until August 2022. At the same time, he was elected president of the Partnership Group of the European Statistical System, a position which he ceased because he departed from the INE. He has recently been appointed a member of the ESGAB (European Statistical Governance Advisory Board). He has also worked as a technical consultant at the National Statistics Institute (INE) and the Statistics Institute of Catalonia (IDESCAT).