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 current members are:

Mr Alfred Camilleri, Chairperson

Ms Kerstin Schneider

Mr Maurizio Vichi

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).