Petr Zahradník is an economic expert, analyst and consultant specialising in European Union issues. He is currently Project Manager and Consultant at the EU Office of Česká spořitelna.

He became a member of the National Economic Council in 2009. From 1993 to 1995 he worked at the Institute for European and International Studies of the Office of the Government of Luxembourg and at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria. Upon returning to the Czech Republic he worked for more than seven years as a macroeconomic analyst at private companies active on the capital market - Conseq Finance (1999 - 2003) and Patria Finance (1995 - 1997). From 1995 to 1999 he also served as a consultant to the Office of the President of the Czech Republic. Since 2006 he has been a member of the EuroTeam of the European Commission, DG ECFIN, and since 2010 he has been a member of the Expert Advisory Group of the Czech Ministry for Regional Development.

He systematically focuses on collaboration with academia. He lectures on the economics of transformation at New York University in Prague, and participates in teaching and research activities at the University of Economics in Prague and many other universities and research institutions in the Czech Republic and abroad. In the course of his professional career he has been credited with more than 3,000 citations in both Czech and foreign media, in addition to which he has also written several hundred specialist and popular economics articles, has delivered dozens of lectures at professional conferences and seminars, and is the author of thirteen chapters in book publications. He is the author of two monographs published in book form.

Petr Zahradník graduated from the University of Economics in Prague, majoring in Finance.

From 1991 to 1992 he was a research fellow at the Department of Economics of Queen Mary and Westfield College at the University of London. Between 1992 and 1993 he pursued parallel studies combining the Program in Economic Policy Management of Columbia University in New York with European Studies at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. During this period he also conducted economic research as part of a project for the World Bank.