Environmental scientist appointed to lead European Environment Agency

NEWS RELEASE

Copenhagen, 26 February 2003

Environmental scientist appointed to lead European Environment Agency

Professor Jacqueline McGlade, an environmental scientist active across a broad spectrum of the life sciences, is to be the next Executive Director of the European Environment Agency (EEA), the main European-level provider of environmental information to policy makers and the public.

Following a public recruitment procedure, the Management Board of the Agency yesterday appointed Prof. McGlade, who has dual British and Canadian citizenship, for a five-year period. She is expected to take up the post by 1 June.

Prof. McGlade, 47, is currently Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Professorial Fellow in Environmental Informatics and Mathematics at University College, London.

She will succeed Gordon McInnes, who has been Interim Executive Director since the EEA's first Executive Director, Domingo Jiménez-Beltrán, retired from the Agency at the end of May 2002.

Prior to taking up her current position in 2000, Prof. McGlade served as Director of the NERC Centre for Coastal and Marine Sciences in the UK. Her previous positions include Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Warwick, UK, and Director of the Theoretical Ecology Group at the government research centre at Jülich in Germany.

The winner of several academic awards, prizes and scholarships in various countries, Prof. McGlade has over 150 publications to her name on such subjects as environmental informatics, ecosystems analysis, climate change, paleoecology, remote sensing, natural resource management, risk and governance.

She has also broadcast extensively on television and radio and led or participated in expeditions and field activities in the Caribbean, Red Sea, coastal areas of the South China Sea, western Africa, the north Atlantic and Canadian Arctic.

Prof. McGlade began her career as Senior Research Scientist in Canada's Fisheries and Oceans Department. She has contributed to advisory reports for governments on a range of issues including north Atlantic fisheries management, environmental impacts of the Gulf War, genetic engineering, biosafety and the release of GMOs, and transboundary pollution in Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Since 1998 she has been a Board Member of the Environment Agency of England and Wales.

Prof. McGlade holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) Honours degree in Marine Biology, Biochemistry and Soil Science from University College of North Wales, UK, a doctorate (PhD) in Aquatic Sciences and Zoology from the University of Guelph, Canada, and a Master of Arts (MA) degree from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Notes for Editors

In line with the requirements of the EU Regulation governing the EEA, the Management Board reached its decision after interviewing candidates shortlisted by the European Commission. The meeting was chaired by Board Chairman Prof. Kees Zoeteman of the Netherlands.

The Board comprises one representative of each EEA member country plus two representatives of the European Commission and two nominated by the European Parliament. Only EU Member States and the Commission and Parliament representatives have voting rights.

About the EEA

The European Environment Agency is the main source of information used by the European Union and its Member States in developing environment policies. The Agency aims to support sustainable development and to help achieve significant and measurable improvement in Europe's environment through the provision of timely, targeted, relevant and reliable information to policy-making agents and the public. Established by the EU in 1990 and operational in Copenhagen since 1994, the EEA is the hub of the European environment information and observation network (EIONET), a network of around 300 bodies across Europe through which it both collects and disseminates environment-related data and information.

The Agency, which is open to all nations that share its objectives, currently has 30 member countries. These are the 15 EU Member States; Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, which are members of the European Economic Area; and the 12 EU accession countries, namely Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland (since 1 January 2003), Romania, Slovenia and the Slovak Republic. The EEA is the first EU body to take in the accession countries. In addition Turkey, an EU candidate country, has completed ratification of its EEA membership and is expected to join by 1 April 2003. Negotiations on EEA membership are also under way with Switzerland.