Ramon Tremosa


Ramon Tremosa i Balcells is a Spanish economist and politician, professor at the Department of Economic Theory at the University of Barcelona, . From 2009 onwards he has been independent MEP for Convergència i Unió and has been re-elected in 2014. He is author of various books and academic articles about monetary politics, fiscal federalism and regional economics.

Early life and education

Ramon Tremosa was born in Barcelona on the 30th of June in a family originally from Lleida. Until the age of 15 he lived in Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona where he attended school at Don-Bosco. Later, he moved to the popular area of Gracia in Barcelona, where he finished school at La Salle.
In 1992 he completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Barcelona and combined his studies with work in the field of tax consultancy from 1987 onwards. Seven years later, in 1999, he completed his doctorate at the University of Barcelona, where he has lectured since 1992. Tremosa did his thesis in the Autonomous University of Barcelona about the influence of the monetary policy on the Catalan manufacturing industry. In 1999 he also completed a Master in Applied Economic Analysis at the University Pompeu Fabra. It is worth mentioning he was in 2006 one of the promoters of the vote against the Catalan Statute of Autonomy.

Political career

Tremosa was leader of the list as independent candidate for the Catalan party Convergència i Unió and was elected MEP at the European Parliament in the 2009 European elections. He has since been serving on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. In this capacity, he drafted reports on the supervision of the European financial system, the report of the European Central Bank and competition.
Between 2009 and 2014 Tremosa also served as a substitute on the Committee on Transport and Tourism, where he actively took part in the debates about the Mediterranean Corridor, the Single European Railway Directive and the discussions about a common agrarian policy.
He is one of the main defenders of the official use of Catalan language in the European institutions, the guarantee of a minimum flow for the Ebro river and the fight against monopolies, which are a threat to the free market.
In May 2014 Tremosa was re-elected. In 2014, he co-sponsored a non-binding bill before the European Parliament calling on the European Commission to consider separating Google’s search-engine business from its other commercial activities to ensure fair competition on the internet. He currently serves as the Parliament's rapporteur on the annual report of the European Central Bank. From 2016 until 2017, Tremosa was part of the Parliament's Committee of Inquiry into Money Laundering, Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion that investigated the Panama Papers revelations and tax avoidance schemes more broadly.

Books