Josef Zieleniec
Doc. Ing. Josef Zieleniec, CSc. (born on 28 May 1946 in Moscow) is a Czech politician and former Member of the European Parliament. From 2004, he has been a member of the SNK-ED. In the European Parliament, he was a member of the European People's Party and sat on the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs and Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
Josef Zieleniec spent the greater part of his professional career working as an economist. Prior to the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1989 he worked first in the Institute of Research in Engineering Technology and Economics Research, and later at the Institute of Economics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Science. Apart from research in microeconomic theory, he dealt with problems of economic transition from a centrally planned to market economy. The study „Czechoslovakia at the crossroads", based on his research had a significant impact on discussions of economic reforms after 1989.
At the beginning of 1990 Josef Zieleniec co-founded The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education,the first American-style economics Ph.D. program in Central and Eastern Europe, at the Charles University in Prague. He became its first director, was also appointed senior lecturer in economics and was a member of the Scientific Council of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University.
Zieleniec has Polish heritage.