The Management Board of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has selected Bjorn Hansen as ECHA’s next Executive Director.
As part of the appointment procedure, Bjørn Hansen will make a statement before the European Parliament and answer questions of its Members. The contract signature is scheduled for the Management Board meeting of 14-15 December 2017.
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Henrik Søren Larsen, Deputy Chairman of ECHA’s Management Board: “We selected an excellent candidate and look forward to hearing the European Parliament Committee’s views. Our assessment benefitted from the very good job the Commission did to provide us with such high-quality candidates”.
In June 2003, Bjorn joined the Chemicals Unit of DG Environment in Brussels, where he worked as a head of unit. From 2007 to 2008, he was seconded to ECHA as the Director of Operations and has been involved in the development of REACH from its very early days.
Before joining DG Environment, he worked as an area coordinator for the existing substances team at the European Chemicals Bureau at the Commission's Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy.
Bjorn obtained his PhD in Probability Theory from the Technical University of Eindhoven in 1988.
He was one of the candidates shortlisted by the European Commission after an open competition, and who were interviewed by the Management Board for the post.
Bjorn's selection follows that of Geert Dancet, ECHA’s current Executive Director, who was appointed as ECHA’s first Executive Director of in January 2008. He will retire as of the beginning of 2018. The term of office of the Executive Director is five years. It may be prolonged by the Management Board once for a further five years.
