Name Mats Persson | ||
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Books Better Off Out?: The Short-Term Options for Greece Inside and Outside of the Euro | ||
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Mats Persson was a special adviser to former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, first appointed in 2015. In this role he advocated David Cameron's EU reform program and the UK's EU membership prior to the referendum on the UK's continuing membership of the EU. Following the failure of the EU reform program, the UK's rejection of EU membership and David Cameron's resignation he ceased to work for the UK Government.
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He was previously director of Open Europe, a think tank which promotes ideas for political and economic reform in Europe 2010-2015. He was instrumental in changing the organization's focus from being a UK think tank opposing UK involvement in further EU integration to become a European think tank advocating liberal EU wide reforms. To do so Persson recruited a pan-EU staff and co-founded and joining the advisory board of Open Europe Berlin.
He has written and published on a broad range of issues relating to Europe and the European Union including the eurozone crisis, institutional reform, EU budget, financial regulation, trade policy, German politics and Britain's position in Europe. He tweets on European policy as "matsJpersson".
Mats Persson was a regular commentator in UK and international media. He wrote a regular blog for the Daily Telegraph and has written in The Times, the Sunday Times, The Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, Dagens Nyheter and several other papers and publications. He has appeared numerous times on BBC Newsnight, Sky News, ITV News, CNBC and CNN as well as other European and international TV outlets. He has contributed to various BBC radio programmes including The World Tonight and the Today Programme.
In a 2013 feature in Swedish left-leaning magazine Arena, author and journalist Katrine Kielos labelled Mats "one of the politically most influential Swedes in Europe". In 2011, Mats Persson was selected by the Diplomatic Courier one of 99 influential international leaders aged 33 or under. In 2014, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne noted that "Mats and the Open Europe team are influencing the debate not just in the UK but right across Europe."
Mats grew up in Bankeryd, Sweden. He received a bachelor's degree from Liberty University in Virginia, United States, where he attended on an athletic scholarship. He was a member of the 2004 Liberty Flames basketball team that won the Big South Conference, qualifying for the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. Mats was honored with the Christenberry Award for Academic Excellence by the Big South Conference, having graduated with a 4.0 Grade Point Average. He received his master's degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science.