Ivan Štefanec was born in 1961 in Považská Bystrica, Slovakia. He is a postgraduate from the University of Economics in Bratislava, where he obtained a PhD Degree in Economic Informatics in 1994. He also completed his studies at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and received an MBA. He worked at Coca-Cola as a General Manager and a Director for European Integration. He was a founding partner and is Honorary President of the Business Alliance of Slovakia. He joined the SDKÚ-DS Party in 2006 and became a member of the National Council of the Slovak Republic. He was Chairman of the Committee on European Affairs and a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Finance, Budget and Currency. Ivan Štefanec also served as a governmental plenipotentiary for the introduction of the Euro in Slovakia. He is a member of the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection and a substitute on the Budgets Committee of the European Parliament. MEP since 2014.