Poul Mathias Thomsen was at the IMF for 38 years, working almost exclusively on Europe, from 2014 as Director of its European Department. As Director, Mr. Thomsen oversaw the Fund’s policy dialogue with all its European member countries and with the ECB and the European Commission. He worked closely with political leaders and senior officials at the national and European levels, representing the Fund at Euro Group meetings and accompanying its Managing Director to meetings of the European Council.
Before his appointment to Director for Europe, Mr. Thomsen worked mainly on the design and negotiation of economic adjustment programs supported by the IMF under its various lending facilities. During the Euro Area crisis, Mr. Thomsen negotiated programs with Greece (2010 and 2012) and Portugal (2011) and was the Fund’s main interlocutor with the ECB and the European Commission within the “Troika” framework. Prior to this, during the Global Financial Crisis, he supervised the IMF teams negotiating arrangements with Ukraine and Poland and was the lead-negotiator in program discussions with Iceland (2008). Before the Global Financial Crisis, Mr. Thomsen worked mainly on IMF programs with countries in Central and Eastern Europe during their transition to market economies. He worked initially on countries in the Balkan, directing program discussions with the constituent states of the former Yugoslavia and with Romania, before becoming head of the Fund’s Russia team during the Russian financial crisis in 1998. He lived in Russia from 2000 to 2004, heading the Fund’s Moscow Office.
Mr. Thomsen research interests are mainly focused on Euro Area macroeconomic policies, architecture and governance issues, as well as on their broader implications for European integration. He is particularly interested in tensions within the Euro Area arising from the lack of structural convergence and from inconsistencies of policy actions at the national and European levels. Mr. Thomsen is also interested in monetary policy issues, in particular the appropriateness of the monetary policy framework, issues relating to Central Bank independence and to potential risks of fiscal dominance and market capture, and implications of monetary policy for income and wealth distribution.