Co-chair of the Support Group on MSP under the Political Declaration and Project Coordinator SEANSE, Rijkswaterstaat, the agency of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management

Biography

Leo de Vrees (1956) presently works as a senior advisor at Rijkswaterstaat, the agency of the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management. He is member of the Ministerial team who develops a revised policy for the North Sea in which marine spatial planning is a large component. At present he chairs an international group of Marine spatial planners of North Sea countries to develop large scale wind farms at the North Sea and is project coordinator of an EU sponsored project SEANSE on this topic. In the period February 2010 – February 2014 he worked for the marine unit of DG Environment of the European Commission. At DG ENV he worked on the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and especially the descriptors on hydrographic changes, marine litter and underwater noise. In addition, he was Chef de File on all marine litter issues at the EC and delegate on behalf of the EC to the OSPAR Convention. He has a long history in marine, coastal and water matters. At the end of the previous decade and at the beginning of this century he worked for UNEP's programme on the protection of the marine environment from land based sources. In the nineties he worked world-wide on several integrated coastal zone management projects. In the eighties he lived in Africa, where he worked on drinking water projects.