Headshot of Jos Delbeke

Jos Delbeke

Professor, School of Transnational Governance, EUI

Former Director General, European Commission, DG Clima

Mr Jos Delbeke (1954, Belgium), is the Director-General of the European Commission's DG Climate Action since its creation in 2010. He joined the European Commission in 1986.

He was very involved in negotiations on the 2009 package on climate change and energy in the EU Council and Parliament.  Mr Delbeke has been a key player in developing EU legislation on cars and fuels, the Emissions Trading System (ETS), air quality, emissions from big industrial installations and chemicals (REACH). As an economist, he always underlined the role of market-based instruments and of cost-benefit analysis in the field of the environment. For several years Mr Delbeke has been responsible for developing Europe's International Climate Change strategy and he was for many years the European Commission's chief negotiator at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties.

He holds a PhD in economics (Louvain, 1986) and worked in 1985 at the International Monetary Fund (Washington DC, USA). Since 2013 he is a lecturer at the University of Louvain (Belgium) on European and international environmental policy.

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