Jaroslaw Pietras

Director General, General Secretariat, Council of the European Union,

Jaroslaw Pietras is currently Director General of the DG TREE (Transport, Energy, Environment, Education) at the European Council. He previously lectured at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economics. He has been awarded a Ph.D. in economics in 1986 and a M.A. in economics at the same University.

Dr Pietras has been working for the Polish Government on European issues since 1990 and since 1997 until 2006 in the rank of a Deputy Minister and later a Secretary of State for European Affairs and a Head of the Office of the Committee for European Integration, Warsaw. Among numerous responsibilities in this position the most prominent were the following: Secretary of the Committee for European Integration, Deputy Chairman of the European Committee of the Council of Ministers, Deputy Chairman of the Inter-ministerial Team on the WTO Trade Negotiations and, previously, Deputy Chairman of the Negotiations Team for the Polish Accession to the EU. He was also during 2006 Secretary of State in the Ministry of Finance in Poland

During his career Dr Pietras has also been Poland‘s head negotiator for the services in the GATT Uruguay Round – Group Negotiations on Services (1990-94); World Bank consultant (1997-98); Chairman, UNCTAD Commission on Investment, Technology and other Financial Issues (1997-98); and Adviser to the Minister for European Integration. He was also a member of the negotiating team for the Europe Agreement between Poland and EC in 1991 and the Deputy Chief Negotiator for Polish Accession to the EU.

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