Elisa Ferreira

Keynote Speaker

European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms

Elisa Ferreira is the European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms. Before that, she was Vice Governor of the Bank of Portugal. During her tenure, she was Portugal’s representative on the Supervisory Board of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. Dr. Ferreira was previously a Member of the European Parliament, coordinating for the Group of Socialists and Democrats in the EP’s Economic and Monetary (ECON) Committee, and was rapporteur, co-rapporteur, or shadow rapporteur of many key legislative files, including the ‘six-pack’ and ‘two-pack’, the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD), and the regulation creating the Single Resolution Mechanism. In Portugal, Dr. Ferreira was a Member of the Portuguese National Parliament and Portugal’s Minister for Planning following her term as Portugal’s Minister for the Environment. She has also been Executive Vice President of the Porto Industrial Association, Vice President of Portugal’s Northern Region Coordination Commission, and member of the Board of Portugal’s Statistics Authority. She holds a degree in economics from the University of Porto, and a master’s degree and PhD from the University of Reading in the UK. She is a professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Porto (on leave of absence).