User:Fulster30/sandbox

Mats Persson
Mats Persson is the Director of Open Europe, a think tank that promotes ideas for political and economic reform in Europe. He was appointed Director in January 2010. He is also a co-founder and Advisory Board Member of Open Europe Berlin gGmbH.

He has written and published on a broad range of issues relating to Europe and the European Union including the eurozone crisis, institutional reform , EU budget, financial regulation, trade policy, German politics and Britain's position in Europe. He tweets on European policy as “matsJpersson.”

Mats Persson is a regular commentator in UK and international media. He writes a regular blog for the Daily Telegraph and has written in the Times, the Sunday Times , the Guardian , the Wall Street Journal , Dagens Nyheter and several other papers and publications. He has appeared numerous times on BBC Newsnight, Sky News , ITV News, CNBC and CNN as well as other European and international TV outlets. He has contributed to various BBC radio programmes including the World Tonight and the Today Programme.

In a 2013 feature in Swedish left-leaning magazine Arena, author and journalist Katrine Kielos labelled Mats "one of the politically most influential Swedes in Europe". In 2011, Mats Persson was selected by the Diplomatic Courier one of 99 influential international leaders aged 33 or under. In 2014, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne noted that "Mats and the Open Europe team are influencing the debate not just in the UK but right across Europe."

Mats grew up in Bankeryd, Sweden. He received a bachelor's degree from Liberty University in Virginia, USA where he attended on an athletic scholarship. He was a member of the 2004 Liberty Flames basketball team that won the Big South Conference, qualifying for the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship. Mats was honored with the Christenberry Award for Academic Excellence by the Big South Conference, having graduated with a 4.0 Grade Point Average. He received his master's degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science.