Speaker Biographies
Keynote Speakers
Speakers
Moderators
Keynote Speakers
Janez Potočnik
Commissioner for Environment, European Commission
Dr Janez Potočnik (1958) graduated from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia (Ph.D. degree 1993). After a successful career starting in 1989 in Slovenia as a researcher at the Institute of Economic Research, Director of the Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development (1994). He was appointed Head of Negotiating Team for Accession of Slovenia to the EU (1998). He was also Director of Government Office for European Affairs (2000), Minister Councillor at the Office of the Prime Minister (2001) and Minister responsible for European Affairs (2002). In 2004 he joined the European Commission, first as "shadow Commissioner for Enlargement and then as Commissioner responsible for Science and Research. In 2010 Dr Potočnik became Commissioner for Environment.
Daniel Calleja-Crespo
Director General, DG Enterprise and Industry, European Commission
Since 1st February 2012, Mr. Daniel Calleja is Director General of DG Enterprise and Industry.
Daniel Calleja was Deputy Director General of DG Enterprise and Industry, from February 2011 to January 2012, in charge of internal markets for goods, competitiveness and innovation, SMEs and entrepreneurship, international negotiations and tourism. He is the Special Envoy for SMEs.
Mr Calleja was Director for Air Transport at the European Commission from November 2004 to February 2011, in charge of the single European aviation market and its external dimension. He has successfully negotiated, on behalf of the E.U., the EU-US Open Skies Agreement. He was the Chairman of the Air Safety and the Single Sky Committees and Chairman of the Board of the SESAR Joint Undertaking.
Between 1999 and 2004, he was Head of Cabinet of the Vice-president of the European Commission, Mrs. Loyola de Palacio, responsible for Transport, Energy and relations with the European Parliament. During this period, he participated actively in the elaboration of the EU transport policy, notably in the launching of the Transport White Book, the Single European Sky, the creation of the European Air Safety Agency (EASA) and the Galileo program.
Between 1995 and 1999, Mr. Calleja was the Head of Cabinet for Commissioner Marcelino Oreja, responsible for institutional affairs, and for the Amsterdam Treaty negotiations. In 1995, he was the legal adviser in the Cabinet of the President of the European Commission, responsible for Transport, Competition, State Aids and the control of the application of Community Law.
Between 1993 and 1994, he advised the Transport Commissioner in the area of liberalisation of air transport, State aid cases concerning the restructuring of airlines, the first directive on groundhandling, the implementation of the third air package and the CRS regulation.
Between 1986 and 1993, he was Member of the Legal Service of the Commission and he represented the institution in numerous cases before the European Court of Justice.
M. Calleja is the author of several publications. He has lectured in European Law in several universities and institutes of various Member States. Mr Calleja has a degree in Law and in Business Administration from the University of Comillas, Madrid.
Grazyna Henclewska
Undersecretary of State responsible for Raw Materials, Polish Ministry of Economy
On 10 July 2008, the Prime Minister appointed Grażyna Henclewska to the position of Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Economy.
Grażyna Henclewska was born on 20 October 1958. She graduated from Warsaw University of Life Sciences (SGGW) and completed postgraduate studies at the Collegium of Management and Finance, Warsaw School of Economics.
She was professionally involved in public administration and economic analyses for the most of time. She is an appointed civil servant.
In the years 1996 – 2000, she worked in the Department of Analyses and Publications of the Central Statistical Office where she carried out analyses, compiled data and supervised preparation of economic information.
Since 2000 she has been working in the Department of Analyses and Forecasting of the Ministry of Economy . Initially, she held the position of Minister's Advisor acting as Department Deputy Director. She was in charge of the foreign trade analysis group and the public statistics group.
From May 2003 until the end of 2005, she was responsible for cooperation with the international organisations: World Bank and OECD. She participated in the work of the OECD and EU committees and working groups.
Since 1 February 2006 , she has held the position of the Department Director and carried out content-related supervision of economic reports, analyses and forecasts.
Member of the Council of the National Centre for Research and Development and member of the Statistical Council.
She likes mountain hiking and music.
Married, two daughters.
Speakers
Zhang Lirong
Deputy Ambassador , Mission of the People's Republic of China to the EU
Mr. Zhang Lirong was born in 1956 and is a University graduate. He joined the foreign service in 1976.
From 1977 to 2012 Mr. Zhang Lirong had been working in the Western European Department, the General Office and the Information Department of MFA as well as in the Central Foreign Affairs Office of the State Council and Foreign Affairs Office of Jiangsu Province. He had served as Deputy Director, Director and Deputy Director-Generals.
Mr. Zhang Lirong had been working for several times in the Chinese Embassy in Denmark and the UK as diplomat and promoted to Political Counselor and Minister Counselor.
Since July 2012 Mr. Zhang Lirong has been Minister of the Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the EU.
Judith Merkies MEP
Member, European Parliament
Judith Merkies is a staunch advocate for disruptive green thinking with a keen interest in the topic of raw materials and resource efficiency. An initiator of a cycle of five expert meetings , Ms. Merkies is a seasoned speaker on resource efficiency and the geopolitical consequences of rare earth depletion. She was a shadow rapporteur on the parliamentary report on a resource-efficient Europe. In addition, Judith Merkies has addressed the topic on raw materials on many occasions in the parliamentary committees on industry and on environment, and in the plenary.
Judith Merkies is a champion of green business models that capture the value of resource efficient, recyclable, high quality products and services. She advocates the issue of the leasing society, where customers pay to get services, so that for the rationale of producers shifts from selling as much goods as possible to rendering high quality services. She wrote a book on this topic: The Lease Society: The End of Ownership
Ms Merkies became a member of the European Parliament following the 2009 elections. Having been elected on a personal vote, Merkies is currently a full member of the Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE), the Petitions Committee (PETI) as well as the delegation for relations with the United States and she is a substitute member on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee (ENVI) as well as the delegation for relations with the Arabian Peninsula.
Kevin Bradley
President, Nickel Institute
Dr Kevin Bradley is currently President of the Nickel Institute, the global representative body of the nickel metal and mining industry. The institute has 26 member companies including the top five multi-national mining conglomerates.
An environmental scientist with more than 20 years experience in international and EU public policy, regulatory affairs and issues management, Dr. Bradley has worked within a variety of public and private organizations and institutions including the European Commission (DG ENV), the Nickel Institute and the international trade association for the major beverage carton manufacturers and their paperboard suppliers (ACE). He was a Director and head of the Dublin Office of Environmental Resources Management (ERM) and founder and managing Director of Coolegad Services, a consultancy providing EU environmental policy and regulatory issues management services to companies and trade associations which he ran for three years.
He has written extensively on environmental impact and strategic environmental assessment as well as numerous other articles and contributions on environment and sustainable development. In 1987 and 1988 he was a member of the teaching faculty of the WHO International Summer Course on EIA held at the University of Aberdeen.
Mattia Pellegrini
Head of Unit, Raw materials, Metals, Minerals and Forest-based industries, European Commission
Mattia Pellegrini is currently Head of Unit for Raw Materials, Metals, Minerals and Forest-based Industries. Previously, he worked as Member of the Cabinet of the Vice president of the European Commission, in charge of Enterprise and Industry. Previously, he was Deputy Head of Unit at the European Commission in the Strategy and Analysis Unit of DG Health and Consumer Protection (DG SANCO).
Mr Pellegrini has previously worked in DG Environment, where he was responsible for WTO negotiations on Trade and Environment, and in DG Competition (Merger Task Force). He has a Master’s Degree in European Legal Studies obtained at the College of Europe, Bruges, and a postgraduate diploma in EC Law obtained at L.U.I.S.S. “Guido Carli”, University of Rome. Prior to that, He studied Political Science at L.U.I.S.S. “Guido Carli”, University of Rome and Law at the University of Liège, “Institut d’études juridiques européennes F. Dehousse”.
Guy Thiran
Director-General, Eurometaux
Guy Thiran is a 53 year-old Belgian citizen, married, with two children. He is a chemical and business engineer who started his career in 1983 as a Research Engineer at LABOFINA (Research Centre of the Belgian Petrofina Group). In 1988, he joined CEFIC (European Chemical Industry Council) as Counsellor for Environmental Affairs (industrial pollution, waste management, environmental auditing, environmental standards, eco-taxes, etc.). In 1992, he became Director of the Environment, Health and Safety Department of EUROMETAUX (Association of the European Non-Ferrous Metals Industry) based in Brussels. In 1996, Mr. Thiran joined ICME (the International Council on Metals and the Environment), based in Ottawa, Canada, as Executive Director - Products. In 1999, he briefly returned to CEFIC as Director of Product Management.
Mr. Thiran has been the Director-General of Eurometaux since June 2000.
Eurometaux constitutes the interface between the European non-ferrous metals industry and the European authorities and international or intergovernmental bodies. It is committed to establishing dialogue with the latter in order to ensure early consultation in all fields of policy and legislation that may affect industry and to asserting the sector's views and positions in this respect. It asserts the contribution of the European industry and its products to sustainable development, as well as this industry's views and positions, whenever the opportunity to do so arises across all sectors of society.
Throughout his career, he has occupied several leading positions in European and international negotiations on behalf of industry. Guy Thiran has been chairing the group of mining and metals associations worldwide from 2006 to 2010, thereby playing an important role in ensuring greater cohesion and cooperation across the mining and metals industry worldwide.
Marinke van Riet
International Director, Publish What You Pay
Marinke van Riet joined the civil society movement Publish What You Pay (PWYP) in August 2011 to take up the post of International Director based in London. Prior to joining PWYP, Marinke worked at Marie Stopes International in Madagascar and Ghana as well as in DRC, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Malawi, Uganda, and Kenya, working for a microfinance institution and for a network focusing on pro-poor transport policies and practices. Her interest in natural resource governance stems from these cumulative experiences in Africa as in her view, these countries don’t have to be poor if they only managed their natural wealth reasonably and equitably. Marinke is a Dutch citizen; she lives in London.
PWYP was founded in 2002. Now 700 members and 40 national chapters strong, the global coalition adopted its Vision 20/20 during the tenth anniversary conference held in Amsterdam in September 2012. Vision 20/20 includes a new strategic framework, the Chain for Change which is the value chain developed for and from a citizen’s perspective. What started as a very narrow campaign focusing on revenue transparency (Publish What You Pay or the financial transparency of payments made by extractive companies to governments) has now enveloped much broader asks:
“Publish Why You Pay and How You Extract” covers the areas of the value chain before company payments are made, that determine whether citizens are getting a fair deal for their resources. This includes themes such as the decision to extract, extraction rights, and the monitoring of the terms and conditions of deals and contracts signed between governments and EI companies.
“Publish What You Earn and How You Spend” aims at transparency to result in increased accountability. This pillar covers civil society’s role in ensuring that natural resource revenues reach the state and are spent responsibly.
Ester Van der Voet
Associate Professor, Leiden University
Ester van der Voet obtained her MSc as a biologist in 1982 at Leiden University. Her first job was with the Centre of Energy Conservation, evaluating the consequences of energy scenarios on the natural environment. Since 1984 she has been employed as a researcher at the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML) at Leiden University. She has conducted research that for the most part can be placed under the heading of Industrial Ecology. Research areas are, among others: stock breeding and the ammonia problem, risk assessment, life-cycle assessment, biodiversity policy, natural resource accounting, indicator development, material flow accounting, and especially substance flow analysis. In this last field she obtained her PhD in 1996. She still is employed at the CML as a senior researcher and project leader. She is now employed as an Associate Professor and has contributed to the start-up of a MSc program in Industrial Ecology.
Patrice Christmann
Head of Mineral Resources Department, BRGM
Patrice Christmann is a geologist, specialised in economic geology. He owns a Ph.D. in geosciences obtained in 1979 from the University of Grenoble (France) and a master level degree from the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Paris, obtained in 1993. During his studies he worked as a junior geologist with the Ministry for natural resources of Québec (Canada), and did his field work on the Copper Cliff Cu-Au deposit, near Chibougamau in preparation of his Ph.D. He entered BRGM in 1977, and worked eight years in geological mapping and mineral exploration in Iran and Yemen. In its International Directorate, which he joined in 1985, he managed project development in several world regions. From 1997 to 2000 he worked three years as a seconded national expert with the European Commission (DG Development), in Brussels, in the mineral resources domain. He returned to Brussels a second time from 2004 to 2009, as the Secretary-General of EuroGeoSurveys, the Association of 33 European geological surveys. He then returned to BRGM to become the head of its Mineral Resources department.
Since September 2010 he is deputy director of BRGM's Corporate strategy directorate, in charge of BRGM's mineral resources strategy. In this position he coordinates BRGM's contribution to the French committee on strategic metals and to the European Commission's raw materials initiative.
Since June 2010, he is a member of the UNEP International Resources Panel (www.unep.org/resourcespanel).
He is a member of the High-Level Group that steers the European Innovation Partnership on Raw Materials.
His areas of interest are public policies related to the sustainable management of natural resources and mineral raw materials economics.
John Ludden
Executive Director, British Geological Survey
Before taking the post of Executive Director at the BGS, John was Director of the Earth Sciences Division at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). He has also served as Director of Research for the CNRS in Nancy, France, where he also taught at the French National School of Geology (ENSG-Nancy). Prior to this, Professor Ludden worked at the University of Montreal, Columbia University and with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the USA. He holds a doctorate in Igneous Petrology from the University of Manchester, UK. Professor Ludden is a Past-President of the European Geosciences Union and Eurogeosurveys and a visiting professor at Oxford and Leicester universities and was elected as a foreign member of the Russian Academy of sciences in 2012. He serves on the boards of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Project (IODP), The International Continental Drilling (ICDP), The Global earthquake Model (GEM) and IGS plc (trading as BGSi international).
Petros Sourmelis
Head of Unit, Market Access, Industry, Energy and Raw Materials, European Commission
Petros Sourmelis took up his new duties as Head of the Market Access, Industry, Energy and Raw Materials Unit on 1 January 2012. He was Head of the Market Access Unit from May 2009 to December 2011. Prior to that and starting from 2005 he was the Head of the DG Trade Unit in charge of international negotiations in the area of trade in services and investment. In this capacity, he was directly involved in the GATS negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda, in WTO accession negotiations as well as in bilateral and regional negotiations conducted by the EU. From 2001 until 2004, Petros Sourmelis was the Head of the trade section of the EU Delegation in Washington. In previous postings, he was responsible as Deputy Head of Unit for WTO dispute settlement matters and for the implementation of the Trade Barriers Regulation.
Petros is Greek. He has post-graduate (DEA) degrees in international public law and international private law from the University of Paris-I. He joined the European Commission services in 1989.
Michel Baumgartner
EU Affairs Manager, Eurobat
Michel Baumgartner represents automotive and industrial battery manufacturers towards the EU Institutions and towards counterpart organizations worldwide. He also coordinates EUROBAT’s activities relating to the environment, health and safety. Prior to joining EUROBAT, Michel has been involved with the European Technology Platform for Hydrogen and Fuel Cells and worked as a consultant for a variety of clients in the energy and construction sectors.
Michel holds a Master Degree in Public Management of the Institut Supérieur du Management Public et Politique (Paris and Brussels), a Master Degree in European Law of the Institut d’Etudes Politiques of Strasbourg (France) and a Degree in Law of the University of Rouen (France).
Moderators
Dafydd ab Iago
Brussels Correspondent, Argus Media
Based in Brussels for over 15 years, Dafydd is the Brussels correspondent for Argus Media. He covers EU affairs with a special focus on energy, climate and transport issues.
Dafydd is also European correspondent for Welsh-language monthly Barn and writes a monthly column on European language issues for La Ondo de Esperanto. He was educated at Oxford, Vienna, and Bristol.
Dafydd has also reported on economic affairs and tourism as well as being a news reader for Radio Flanders International. In 1999, he set up and edited Trends International, a Belgian business monthly formerly published by Roularta Media Group.
Georg Danell
Senior Partner, Kreab Gavin Anderson
Georg Danell managed the Brussels office from 1994 to 2009 and is one of Brussel’s leading public affairs consultants. Prior to heading up Kreab Gavin Anderson’s Brussels operation, Georg built up the company’s public affairs activities in Stockholm. Before that, he was Secretary General of the Swedish Moderate Party, served as Cabinet Minister at the Swedish Ministry of Housing (responsible for Physical Planning and Land-Use) and was a member of the Swedish Parliament. He has also been Member of Board in some Swedish large companies and Director of Communications and Governmental Affairs in Nordstjernan AB.
Logistics
When
Tuesday 19 March, 2013
08.30 to 17.00
CET
Where
Stanhope Hotel
Rue du Commerce 9
B-1000 Brussels
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