At its regular meeting on Tuesday the Supervisory Board of Eesti Pank nominated Peter Lõhmus Chair of the Fiscal Council and Karin Jõeveer as a new member of the Council. Raul Eamets and Urmas Varblane had previously resigned from the Council.

Peter Lõhmus is an experienced financial sector economist who has advised on the implementation of economic reforms in various countries. He has worked at the IMF, the European Commission and Eesti Pank. Karin Jõeveer is Head of the Department of Economics and Finance at TalTech. Jõeveer has conducted research at the London School of Economics and lectured at various UK universities. In the past, Jõeveer has also been an economic researcher at Eesti Pank.

The Estonian Fiscal Council is an independent advisory body charged with assessing the sustainability of the country’s fiscal policy. The existence of a fiscal council as such is mandatory for all euro area countries.

The Fiscal Council’s Chair, Vice-Chair and four members must be experts in their field and they are nominated for a period of office of five years. The current composition of the Council is as follows: Chair Peter Lõhmus, Vice-Chair Andrus Alber, and members Karin Jõeveer, Andres Võrk, Ülo Kaasik and Martti Randveer. The powers of the current composition, including Lõhmus and Jõeveer, will come to an end in May 2024. The proposal to appoint members of the Fiscal Council comes from the Governor of the central bank, and the decision is made by the Supervisory Board.

On other topics, Deputy Governor introduced the preliminary conclusions of the central bank’s forthcoming economic forecast. Eesti Pank will publish their new economic forecast on 26 September.

Governor Madis Müller gave the Supervisory Board an overview of the economic situation in the euro area and presented the results of the central bank’s strategy update. The Executive Board provided an overview of the activities of the first half of the year.

In addition, the Supervisory Board took note of the report on the activities of internal audit in the first half of the year presented by the new Head of Internal Audit Department Viljar Alnek.

The next regular meeting of the Supervisory Board of Eesti Pank will take place on 31 October.

For further information:

Viljar Rääsk
Head of Communications
Eesti Pank
5275 055

[email protected]