Katja Lautar

State Secretary, Ministry of finance, Slovenia

Katja Lautar began her career as a development project manager in SE region. In 2005 she worked in the Office of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovenia as the policy advisor for economic growth and as the Secretary of the Strategic Committee for Economic Development and Structural Reforms. She was involved in preparation of operational programmes for the ERDF,ESS and cohesion fund. From 2007 to 2008, during Slovenia’s presidency of the Council of the EU, she worked as state secretary (deputy minister) at the Governmental Office for Growth. Later she served as head of the Development Policies and Structural Reforms Department in the Government Office for Development and European Affairs (2009–2011), working as head of the inter-ministerial group on the (post) Lisbon agenda within the Slovenian strategy. She was also the deputy director for budgeting and economic policy structural reform coordination (2011) at Ministry of finance, leader of the governmental development planning working group and budget performance synchronisation, and national coordinator for the implementation of the European Semester and EU 2020. From 2008 she works also with OECD and is responsible for coordination of Economic surveys.

In 2014 she became head of the Department for Public Finances Analysis and Coordination of Economic Policy at the Ministry of Finance, which was responsible for economic governance and fiscal policy. In 2019 she became Head and later Director General of the Office/ Directorate for Fiscal and Economic Policy at the Ministry of Finance with focus on fiscal policy, Stability programme and DBP, National reform programme, and commission recommendations. She gained expertise in quality of public finances; performance budgeting, SGP; medium term budget framework (MTBF); strategic and development planning (national strategy) in relation to EU funds. She was a member of steering committee in Slovene enterprise fund (holds a license) and is still a Member of the Executive Board in Centre for European Perspective. She has been a member of the EU’s Economic and Financial Committee (EFC) and Euro Working Group (EWG) since 2019. Previously she was a member of EPC, OGWG, LIME and EFC-A.

Katja Lautar obtained her bachelor’s degree in accounting and auditing, master’s degree from the Faculty of Economics of Ljubljana and her doctorate in efficiency and econometric evaluation.

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