Eric Calcagno

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Eric Calcagno y Maillmann

Subsecretary of Small and Medium Enterprises
Incumbent
Assumed office 
2007
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Incumbent
Assumed office 
10 December 2007
On leave of absence
Preceded by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Argentina Ambassador to France
In office
December 2005 – 2007
President Néstor Kirchner
Preceded by Archibaldo Lanús
Succeeded by Luis Ureta Sáenz Peña

Born April 9, 1967 (1967-04-09) (age 41)
La Plata
Nationality Argentine
Political party Justicialist
Profession Economist

Eric Calcagno y Maillmann (b. 9 April 1967, La Plata) is an Argentine economist, journalist, diplomat and politician. Having been the Ambassador to France, he became a member of the Argentine Senate in 2007 before joining the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as a junior minister.

Calcagno comes from a family with a strong background in academia and connections with France. His grandfather Alfredo Domingo Calcagno, rector of the National University of La Plata, was the Argentine ambassador to UNESCO in Paris during the Presidency of Arturo Frondizi. His father, Alfred Eric Calcagno, studied at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris before working for the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America for more than twenty years. Calcagno studied at French schools and, in the early 1990s, graduated from the École Nationale d'Administration in France in public administration and from the Sorbonne in sociology.[1]

Calcagno worked as a economics consultant and journalist, including for Le Monde Diplomatique (Southern Cone Edition), Diario Hoy of La Plata, the magazines Veintitrés and Veintitrés Internacional and Terra. With his father he co-wrote two books on politics and economics: Para entender la política, entre la ilusión de lo óptimo y la realidad de lo pésimo, Editorial Norma (Buenos Aires, 1999) and La deuda externa explicada a todos (los que tienen que pagarla), Editorial Catálogos (Buenos Aires, 2000).[2] In 2005 he published Terra incógnita, crónica de la caída de la convertibilidad (Catálogos). He was known as a critic of neoliberal economics and the Washington Consensus. He teamed up with his father to teach economics at the National University of Lanús, Buenos Aires and taught a range of other universities, including as Director of the Centre of Studies of National Economic Thought (CEPEN) at the University of Buenos Aires.[3]

In 2005, Calcagno was a reserve member on the Front for Victory list for the Senate for Buenos Aires Province. The list was headed by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and was successful in the October elections, winning the maximum two places. Shortly after the election, in December 2005, Calcagno was named Ambassador to France, after Rafael Bielsa had accepted that position only to reject it a day later in public.[4] In 2007, upon the election of Fernández de Kirchner as President of Argentina, Calcagno replaced her in the Senate. However, within ten days he was granted a leave of absence to take up the President's offer of a position in government. He became subsecretary of Small and Medium Enterprises.[5]

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