Secretary-General Appoints Michèle Coninsx of Belgium Executive Director, Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres confirmed the appointment of Michèle Coninsx of Belgium as Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) at the Assistant Secretary-General level, following the concurrence of the Security Council.  She succeeds Jean-Paul Laborde of France, to whom the Secretary-General is grateful for his commitment and dedicated service to the Organization.

Ms. Coninsx is currently President of Eurojust, the Judicial Cooperation Unit of the European Union, and is also Chair of Eurojust’s Counter Terrorism Team and of the Task Force on the Future of Eurojust.  Appointed Vice-President of Eurojust, and serving between 2008 and 2012, she became a member of the Presidency Team, and Acting President from 2009 to 2010.  Having become the National Member of Belgium at Eurojust in 2002, Ms. Coninsx joined Pro-Eurojust in 2001 as Deputy Prosecutor General.

Before joining Pro-Eurojust, Ms. Coninsx was appointed National Prosecutor in 1997, serving as Deputy Public Prosecutor at the Public Prosecutors Office in Brussels (1990-1997), Expert to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and instructor on anti-terrorism in the air, assigned to the Belgian National Aviation Security Committee (Civil Aviation Administration).

Ms. Coninsx 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).