French Agriculture Minister Stéphane Travert confirmed at the Agriculture Council in Brussels on 16 July that he was proposing Catherine Geslain-Lanéelle as the EU candidate for the post of Director General of the United Nation’s Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) with effect from 1 January 2020.
Until the end of June, Geslain-Lanéelle was the director general for the economic and environmental performance of enterprises at the French Ministry of Agriculture and, between 2006 and 2013, was the executive director of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in Parma.
In the first half of 2018, the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU encouraged member states to make nominations so that the EU could agree on a single candidate to head the FAO but no suggestions were forthcoming. The Austrian Presidency has indicated that Geslain-Lanéelle might be called on to appear before the 28 farm ministers during their informal meeting in Austria on 24 and 25 September.
While there is no written rule, the previous director general of the FAO was Senegalese and the current head is Brazilian, the next could, therefore, be either European or Asian.