Peter Praet

Peter Praet retired in June 2019 after an eight-year run at the ECB.

Before his appointment, Praet was nominated several times by the Belgian government to join the ECB Board. In 2004, his candidacy failed when the German, French, Italian and Spanish governments agreed the biggest Eurozone countries should always have a national member on the six-member board, and therefore chose José Manuel González-Páramo. In 2010, when Praet was proposed to the bank's vice-presidency, governments agreed that the position should go to a sitting governor of a central bank and not, as Praet then was, a director; as a consequence, Vítor Constâncio was chosen by the European Council to replace Lucas Papademos as vice-president. In 2011, Praet replaced Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell; the other candidate for the position had been Elena Kohútiková.

Praet was executive director of the National Bank of Belgium from 2000 to 2011. He was also a member of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and an alternate member of the Bank for International Settlements' Global Economy Meeting. At the same time, he was professor of Monetary Economics at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management.

Praet was chief economist for Fortis Bank. Between 1999 and 2000, he served as chief of staff to Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders. In this capacity, his main task was to lay the ground for Reynders’ Eurogroup presidency in 2001 and oversee the country's most ambitious tax-reform plan in decades.

Praet is half-Belgian and half-German, his father being from Belgium and his mother from Germany. He graduated from Université libre de Bruxelles, with a BA in economics, an MA in economics in 1972, and PhD in economics in 1980.

Peter Praet (born 20 January 1949 in Herchen near Eitorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Allied-occupied Germany) is a Belgian economist who served as a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank from 2011 to 2019 and concurrently as ECB chief economist following his 2012 appointment.