The members of the Executive Committee
The Executive Committee of the Belgian Data Protection Authority (BE DPA) consists of five members, each of which run one of the five BE DPA services. Pending the appointment of two currently vacant mandates, the executive committee is composed of the Director of the Knowledge Centre (and Chairwoman of the BE DPA), the Inspector General, and the Chairman of the Litigation Chamber.
The directors are appointed for a six-year term.
The Director of the General Secretariat and the Director of the Knowledge Centre take turns presiding over the BE DPA. The former during the first three years, the latter during the next three years.
Cédrine Morlière is Director of the Knowledge Centre at the BE DPA and the Chairwoman of the Authority. She is also a member of the Executive Committee.
Cédrine Morlière is well acquainted with the Belgian DPA, having worked there as a legal advisor for seven years (since 2015). Previously, she primarily worked as a lawyer at the Brussels Bar, focusing on data protection law, commercial law and information technology law for eleven years. In those areas of expertise she also gained experience as a legal project manager at an insurance company. Cédrine Morlière has a law degree from the VUB and a degree in intellectual property from the KUB. She already had obtained a master’s degree in French linguistics and literary studies from the ULB.
Peter Van den Eynde is Inspector General at the Belgian Data Protection Authority and an Executive Committee member as well.
Peter Van den Eynde was legal advisor at the Privacy Commission (the former BE DPA) since late 2006, working at the department of External Relations, where most of the information requests and complaints were handled. From 2017 onwards, he was acting as head of department of that service, that eventually became the BE DPA’s Front Office. He started his career as an academic worker of a political group in the federal parliament in 2000, working primarily on criminal law, ethics and privacy. Furthermore, he has a degree in law and criminology from the VUB.
Prof Dr Hielke Hijmans is Chairman of the Litigation Chamber at the Belgian Data Protection Authority and member of the Executive Committee.
He works on part time basis as professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB, Institute for European Studies). In addition, he is a member of the Meijers Committee (an NGO on fundamental rights in the EU), and lecturer at Luxembourg University.
He is author of The European Union as Guardian of Internet Privacy: The Story of Art 16 TFEU (Springer 2016), based on his doctorate thesis. Before his appointment at the BE DPA, he worked as a consultant on EU law and data protection at the Centre for Information Policy Leadership (a think tank in Washington, London and Brussels) and Considerati (a consultancy in Amsterdam) among others. He also worked at the European Data Protection Supervisor for over a decade, foremost as head of the Policy and Consultation department. He also worked at the Court of Justice of the European Union (Cabinet of Advocate General Geelhoed) and at the ministries of Agriculture, Environment and Justice in The Hague, mostly dealing with legislation and EU law. He holds a law degree at Leiden University and a doctorate in law at the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels.