Paul Adamson is chairman of Forum Europe and Forum Global and founder of Encompass (previously E!Sharp), an online magazine and discussion space dedicated to covering the European Union and Europe’s place in the world.

Paul is a member of the Centre for European Reform’s advisory board and Rand Europe’s Council of Advisors. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Policy Institute, King’s College London, a Senior Adviser at the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Britain and Europe at the University of Surrey. He is a patron of the University Association of Contemporary European Studies (UACES) and a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences.

In 2012, Paul was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) “for services to promoting understanding of the European Union” and in 2016 he was made a Chevalier in the Ordre national du Mérite by the French government.

Michel Van Bellinghen, Master of Laws (UCL), started off at the university in 1990 as a researcher, then became an assistant under the supervision of Professor Françoise Tulkens, at the UCL Laws Centre for Criminal Law.

He became an assistant advisor at the Ministry of Justice in 1992 under the supervision of Professor Marc Bossuyt and joined the BIPT in 1997. From 1999 to 2003 he held the position of expert at the private office of Rik Daems, who was the Federal Telecommunications Minister at the time, and afterwards took up the function of Assistant Head of the Private Office. From 2003 until 2009 he was nominated Member of the BIPT Council for the first time. Following this mandate he remained closely affiliated to the Council and supervised the legal department of the regulator during a number of years. He has written scientific publications.

In 2013 he held a position on the Council as a Member. In January 2017 he was assigned Chairman of the BIPT Council. Michel Van Bellinghen has been elected to serve as Chair of BEREC in 2021.

Rita Wezenbeek joined the European Commission in 2002. Before moving to DG CONNECT in December 2020, Rita was the head of DG Competition’s Anti-Trust and Telecommunications Unit, in charge of applying the European competition rules in the area of electronic communications. Between 2010 and 2017, Rita was the head of DG Competition’s unit dealing with Retail Financial Services and Payment Systems. The unit ia. dealt with the investigations against MasterCard and Visa and was responsible for the competition elements of the legislative processes leading to the adoption of the Interchange Fee Regulation and the Payment Services Directive II, opening the EU payment services market for non-bank players.

Before joining the Commission, Rita worked for sixteen years as a private lawyer, specialized in European and corporate law, at the Dutch/ Belgian law firm Nauta Dutilh. During fifteen years, she also was a Member of the Commission on European Integration, an independent advisory body on foreign policy to the Dutch government and Parliament.

Richard is president of the Optical Business Product Line at Huawei. Richard joined Huawei in 1998 and prior to his current position, he was president of Transmission Network Product Line. With more than 20 years of experience in the telecom industry, Richard has gained deep insights in network architecture and solutions, optical network, as well as the rapidly evolving trends in the ICT industry.

Harald Gruber is head of the Digital Infrastructure Division at the Projects Directorate of the European Investment Bank based in Luxembourg. He oversees a team of experts involved in project appraisal. He also works on the Bank’s business strategy with respect to financing of broadband infrastructure, innovation policy and the digital economy in general. He has also contributed in defining new financial instruments for digital infrastructure jointly with European Commission, national promotional banks and private sector.

Harald has also a considerable record of accomplishment in scientific publication. Recent work is on formulating proposals for a digital industrial policy[1] . More in general, he has published articles in refereed journals as well as books. He is on the editorial board of academic journals. He has been also professor at Bocconi University (Milan) for telecommunications economics.

Harald Gruber holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Lise is Director General of ETNO, the Association representing Europe’s leading telecom operators, which she joined in 2016. She leads and oversees all the activities and she is the main external representative of the Association. On behalf of the Association, she is also a Board and an Administrative Committee member of ECSO, the European Cybersecurity Organisation. Lise is Chair of the Boards of Public Interest Registry (.org domain name registry) and the Public Technical Identifiers (PTI), formerly IANA, and affiliate of ICANN.

Prior to joining ETNO, she was Chief Operating Officer of DK Hostmaster and DIFO, the company managing the .dk domain name. In the period between September 2014 and December 2015, she also chaired the Cross Community Working Group for the IANA Stewardship Transition, building on her strong network within the internet community. Lise has 20+ years of experience in the telecoms industry. She started her career at the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation (1996-2000) where she wrote and implemented regulation for the telecommunication markets. After that, she worked for the telecoms operator Telia Networks (2000-2009), where she led various teams dealing with issues as diverse as interconnection agreements, mobile services and industry cooperation.

Miriam Mendioroz joined the European Commission in 2005. She is Head of Sector in charge of the review of the Broadband Cost Reduction Directive in DG CNECT, one of the initiatives included in the Commission Communication ‘Shaping Europe’s digital future’. She has a long experience with the telecoms regulatory framework from legislative development and implementation point of view. She was part of the team that prepared and negotiated the European Electronic Communications Code and have worked before on the implementation of the telecoms regulatory framework as well as following the work of BEREC, the European group of telecoms national regulators. She has previous experience in the private sector in the areas of public affairs and telecoms.

Vincent Garnier brings to this position 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, in Marketing and Business Development in EMEA and Asia for BtoB companies. Most recently he was Marketing Director responsible for defining the marketing strategies for the broadband solutions at CommScope, a global network infrastructure provider company. Prior to joining CommScope, Mr Garnier worked in international business development at TKH Group N.V. and as a Marketing Manager at Prysmian Group & Exide Technologies. Vincent Garnier has been actively involved in the FTTH Council Europe activities for several years. He became a Member of the Board of Directors and Treasurer in 2019.

Roland Montagne has been with IDATE since 1998, and is the Head of Broadband Practice. In recent years, Roland has managed several assignments focused on DSL, cable and wireless access network economics – exploring global issues such as bundled offers over DSL, and the economics of bitstream access and unbundling.

Roland is also in charge of all of IDATE’s FTTx activities. In the area of satellite, he has conducted a variety of assignments devoted to satellite broadband access economics (AGORA) and to market opportunities for a satellite mobile TV offer (S-DMB).

Before joining IDATE, Roland achieved several developments in the area of digital radiocommunications and mobile services.

He worked for a year for AT&T as a Bell Labs research engineer in New Jersey, and has conducted a variety of research projects on optical networks (DWDM) and ATM technologies. Mr. Montagne has also attended several research training programmes on optical communications at CNET (France Telecom R&D).