Gilles de Kerchove


Gilles de Kerchove d'Ousselghem is a Belgian senior European Union official. He was director in the general directorate of Justice and Home Affairs in the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union from 1995 – 2007, he has since been appointed as EU Counter-terrorism Coordinator, succeeding Gijs de Vries.

Biography

He obtained his law degree at the University of Louvain in 1979, later followed by a Masters in Law at Yale Law School in 1984.
He joined the European Commission in 1985 as an administrator in Directorate General IV for Competition. From 1986 to 1995, he worked for the Belgian government, as chief of staff of the deputy prime minister and various ministries.
During his time in office as director in the JHA sector, he had a central role in the negotiations for Eurojust and the European arrest warrant. Since 2007, he holds the office of EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator. He was also Deputy Secretary of the Convention which drafted the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union from 1999 to 2000.
In addition to his administrative duties, he is also a lecturer in law at several universities in Belgium, particularly at the University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, at Saint-Louis University, Brussels and the Université libre de Bruxelles.
In 1979 he married Anne del Marmol and has three children: Arnaud, Thomas and Antoine.

Political Digital Agenda

Since 2015 he is fighting encryption and demands backdoors.