On the picture the President of Eurojust Baroness Michèle Coninsx and H.E. Ambassador Christian Lepage, Permanent Representative of Belgium to the International organizations in The Hague.
Michèle Coninsx president of Eurojust since 2012, has been appointed by the UN Secretary-General as Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate. After moving from The Hague to the New York City UN headquarters in early November, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres confirmed her appointment at the Assistant Secretary-General level.
Ms. Coninsx’s resume is extensive. Ms. Coninsx began her career at Eurojust, the Judicial Cooperation Unit of the European Union, in 2001, when she served as Deputy Prosecutor General. Following, Ms, Coninsx became the National Member of Belgium to Eurojust in 2002. From 2008 to 2012, Ms. Coninsx was appointed as Vice-President and held a position of the Presidency team. From 2009 to 2010, she served as President of Eurojust, and also held the position of Chair in Eurojust’s Counter Terrorism Team and the Task Force on the Future of Eurojust.
Prior, to joining Pro-Eurojust, Ms. Coninsx was appointed as a National Prosecutor in 1997, serving as Deputy Public Prosecutor at the Public Prosecutors Office in Brussels (1990-1997). As an expert to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and instructor on anti-terrorism in the air, she was in charge of training aviation security in several countries, including Kenya, Thailand, Sri Lanka, China, Japan and New Zealand. Additionally, Ms. Coninsx was assigned by the Belgian National Aviation Security Committee to head anti-terrorism training related to aircraft sabotage and hijacking.
Ms. Coninsx worked in the judiciary sector for almost 25 years. From 1997 to 2001, just before joining Eurojust, she was one of the three Belgian national prosecutors in charge of coordinating the fight against organised crime and terrorism at country-wide level, with full jurisdictional powers over the 27 Belgian chief prosecutors. She holds two master’s degrees, one in law and the other in Criminology, from the University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel — VUB). She received the Aggregation higher secondary education (Law) and is specialized in air law. She was an Auditor of the High Studies Security and Defence at the Royal Higher Institute for Defence in Brussels (2005-2006), and a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (since 2016). She is also the Visiting Professor at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London (since 2015) and honorary Fellow of Law and Criminology at VUB (since 2014).
Ms Coninsx is author of several publications, including “Private Security Companies,” “The search of persons at airports,” “Judicial Handbook for Aviation Police Officers,” “Air Law for Air Traffic Controllers,” and “The Fight against Terrorism in the Air.” She was also keynote speaker at several international aviation security conferences dealing with terrorism in the air, airport security, human resources management and aviation security training for airport personnel.
