Brussels, 08/10/2015 (Agence Europe) - Following the partial replacement of the members of the European Court of Justice, Belgian national Koen Lenaerts was elected by his peers on Thursday 8 October as president of the court until 6 October 2018.
Lenaerts succeeds Vassilios Skouris following the end of the latter's term of office. Italian national Antonio Tizzano was elected vice-president for the same term, succeeding Lenaerts in this post.
Born in 1954 and a lawyer at the bar in Brussels until 1989, Lenaerts was a judge at the European General Court until October 2003, then a judge at the European Court of Justice, where he became the vice-president in 2012. Lenaerts also has an academic career, teaching at the College of Europe in Bruges until 1989 and as a 'visiting professor' at Harvard Law School after 1989.
Tizzano was born in 1940. He was a lawyer at the Italian supreme court and a legal advisor to Italy's permanent representation to the EU until 1992 and in parallel has held a number of posts as legal expert, for example as a member of the Italian delegation to Spain and Portugal's accession negotiations, along with the negotiations for the adoption of the Single Act and the Treaty of the Union, as well as a member of a group of independent experts examining the European Commission's finances in 1999. Advocate General at the European Court of Justice since 2000, he became a judge in May 2006. The author of many legal publications and commentaries on the EU treaties and legal codes, Tizzano is a professor of European law at La Sapienza University in Rome after working in number of other universities. (Original version in French by Francesco Gariazzo)