- Philippe Lamberts was a speaker at the SRB Annual Conference 2018
Philippe Lamberts was born in 1963 in Brussels, Belgium. He studied Engineering in applied mathematics, at the Catholic University of Louvain. From 1987 to 2009, he worked at IBM in a variety of positions, predominantly managing business with industrial and retail clients. He was elected in June 2009 for a first term in the European Parliament. In May 2014, he was re-elected for a second term and appointed Co-President of the Green group in the European Parliament. His political career within the Belgian green party (Ecolo) started in 1991. He served 12 years (1995-2006) as a local city councillor in Anderlecht and also as an adviser on foreign and defence policy to the Vice-Prime Minister Isabelle Durant during the first participation of the Greens in the Belgian federal government (1999-2003). In 1999, he became a member of the Council of the European Federation of Green Parties (which would later become the European Green Party) as a representative of Ecolo. He was then elected to the executive Committee in 2003 before becoming co-chair of what meanwhile had become the European Green Party (EGP). His second mandate there ended in November 2012. In the EGP, Philippe Lamberts has led the work on devising the Green New Deal as the response of the European Greens to the multi-faceted global crisis. During his first term in the European Parliament (2009-2014), Philippe Lamberts focused his work on the two committees he was member of. In the economic and monetary affairs committee (ECON) he predominantly dealt with macro-economic, economic governance and banking issues. In the committee for industry, research and energy (ITRE) he acted primarily as the Greens' spokesperson on research and innovation issues and had a strong interest in industrial and SME policies. He was also member of the Parliament's delegation for the relations with China, a country which he sees as a crucial partner in meeting the global challenges of the 21st century. In May 2014, Philippe Lamberts was re-elected as Member of the European Parliament for five years. He was also elected as co-chair of the Greens/EFA political group, first with his German colleague Rebecca Harms (2014-2016), and more recently with Ska Keller (2016-2019). During this term, he aims to reinforce the Greens both within and outside the EU institutions and to continue his work inside the ECON committee, mainly on the financial regulation front and tax justice. In the context of Brexit, he is part of the European Parliament working group which follows the negotiation process between the UK and the EU. Finally, he works at reinforcing relations between green parties and civil society by organising and taking part in various events (in particular European Ideas Lab in Brussels in February 2017).