After expressing its dissatisfaction with the recruitment procedure carried out by the European Commission, the Management Board of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) decided on 8 May to appoint Dr Bernhard Url as the agency’s Acting Executive Director, effective from 1 June 2024. Dr Url, who has been Executive Director since 2014, will remain in this position while the selection process, due to be completed next year, is relaunched.
Last February, the EFSA Management Board declared itself “dissatisfied” with the results of the recruitment procedure for a new Executive Director, and asked the European Commission to relaunch the procedure.
Dr Url was due to leave EFSA at the end of May. He became EFSA’s Executive Director in June 2014 and his term of office was extended in June 2019 for an additional 5 years. A veterinarian by training, he was Managing Director of the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) before joining EFSA. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)