OREANDA-NEWS. Today, the European Commission appointed Silvano Presa as Deputy Director-General in its Budget department (DG BUDG).

Mr Presa, an Italian national, spent most of his career in that department, gathering experience in a wide range of subjects. One of his key tasks in his current position of Director is to prepare the Commission's annual budgetary proposals and to participate in the budgetary negotiations with the European Parliament and the Council. This position allowed him to be involved in many key Commission policies including, for instance, the creation of innovative instruments launched under the Juncker Commission such as the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), Trust Funds, and the Facility for Refugees in Turkey.

Mr Presa joined the Commission as an administrator in the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial affairs in 1985, where his work focussed on economic analysis of the internal market, trade, and cooperation with candidate countries. In 1992, he joined the delegation of the European Commission in Hungary, where he led the Economic and political affairs and information section.

In 1996, he started in the Budget department as Deputy Head of Unit dealing with human and administrative resources. From 1998 to 2002, he led the "Allocation of human resources" unit. Before becoming Director in 2006, he led for four years the unit responsible for the preparation of the 2007-2013 Multiannual Financial Framework, and handling the budgetary aspects of the EU enlargement.

His vast experience makes Silvano Presa ideally suited to fill this newly created post where a key task will be to ensure the best possible interaction of the different budget programmes with financial instruments and Trust Funds, in view of enhancing their consistency, harmonisation, and complementarity, while maximising their leverage. The new challenges the EU is facing, and the new strategies it is pursuing to meet them, call for such innovative tools and instruments.