Board Member LDnet
Expert in local development in rural and fisheries areas, transnational cooperation and in the delivery of EU policies and programmes. He has more than 20 years of experience in networking, policy development and management at national and EU level. A law graduate of the Free University of Berlin he also obtained postgraduation in European Law and EU Public Administration Management. Having worked for the German LEADER+ Network Support Unit and the European LEADER+ Observatory from 2002-2008, he then joined the DG Agriculture and Rural development of the European Commission as Policy Officer for the LEADER approach until 2014 where he was intensively involved in the conception of the CLLD approach. From 2016 -2021 he was Thematic and Territorial Coordinator in the FARNET Support Unit and joined the German LEADER LAG network from 2020-2022 as a secretary. Currently he is a Policy Officer and coordinator of the Interreg Central Europe project H2CE at the Joint Spatial Planning Department of Berlin and Brandenburg. As a volunteer he was vice-president and Policy Adviser to the European LEADER Association for Rural Development (ELARD) from 2016-2019 for the Portuguese LEADER LAG network Minha Terra. Since a few years he is an active member of the Brandenburg Village Movement.
Through his extensive work on EU level, he has supported Authorities and local actors in many Member States as well as in the Western Balkans in the implementation of EU-funded programmes. He is a native German and Portuguese speaker.