Biography | Geert Dancet — The Management Board Made the Interim Director Permanent Here

On 17 December 2007 the ECHA Management Board appointed Geert Dancet Executive Director.

He had already been running the house since 1 June as the Commission's interim choice.

The board had picked him as its candidate on 17 October, when he was the only applicant.

Agence Europe recorded that vote from Helsinki the next day.

Before the December appointment he appeared before the European Parliament's environment committee.

The committee minutes list him present on 21 and 22 November 2007.

The five-year term began on 1 January 2008.

It could be renewed once.

The board used that option in 2012.

He left on 31 December 2017.

The 2008 general report is blunt about what the December vote also unlocked.

Until that appointment the agency's 2007 money was still handled by DG Enterprise in Brussels.

Financial independence started when the board named an Executive Director and an accounting officer.

The meeting took place at the agency's first seat, Annankatu 18.

The building is now the Scandic Helsinki Hub hotel.

The board no longer sits in this block.

The date that still belongs to the pavement is 17 December 2007, when an interim economist became the first elected director of a regulator that had been alive for six months and solvent for a day.

Photo: Kaihsu Tai, 13 January 2010, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons