Xavier Prats Monné (born 1956 in Tarragona) is a high-ranking official of the European Commission. He is currently the Deputy-Director General of the Directorate-General for Education and Culture (since 2011).[1][2] The main policy areas under his responsibility are: the modernisation of European education and training systems; educational mobility, including the "Erasmus" programme for students; and international relations in the field of education, culture and youth. He represents the European Commission (EC) at the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT).
From mid-2007 till the end-2010, he served as the EC Director for employment policy, Europe 2020 Strategy and international relations in the field of employment; in this capacity, he was also responsible for relations between the EC and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), and EC "sherpa" representative at the G20 Labour Ministers meeting. He was also, from 2007 to end-2010, one of the five founding members of the EC Impact Assessment Board, which vets all impact assessments produced by the institution and reports directly to the President. He previously served as: Director for the European Social Fund; Deputy Chief of Staff of the EC Vice-President for external relations; Advisor of the EC Commissioner for Regional policy; assistant to the European Commission Spokesperson; Administrator at the Directorate General for Development policy and at the General Secretariat of the European Commission.
He completed his primary and secondary education at the Istituto Massimo of Rome, Italy. He majored in Social Anthropology at the University of Madrid, Spain (Universidad Complutense), and holds degrees in development economics from the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies in France; and in European Affairs from the College of Europe in Belgium, where he graduated first of the Class of 1981-82 and served as assistant professor. He is from Spain, fluent in Spanish, English, French, Italian, and Catalan.