Raymond Van Ermen
Curriculum Vitae

Present Position:

• Executive Director of European Partners for the Environment (EPE)
• Member of the Executive committee of the Sustainable Trade and Innovation Centre (Geneva)
• Member of the Advisory Committee of the Belgian Fair Trade Centre.
• Member of the Board of Regional Institute for Environmental Technologies (RIET) – Foundation (Singapore)
• Member of the Jury of the World Environment Center (WEC) Gold Medal for International Corporate Achievement in Sustainable Development (Washington)
• Rapporteur of the European Permanent Forum of Civil Society addressing European citizenship (Brussels). Co-author of the Book "Plan B. Citizens facing up to the European Union. Innovation and European Governance : a roadmap to overcome the crisis." ED. LABOR.
• Member of the International Sustainable and Responsible Investment Advisory Committee of FORTIS L Fund. (Luxemburg).

Years with EPE:

• As Founder and Board Member as
  European Environemntal Bureau Secretary General 1994-1998
• As Executive Director 1999 - to present

Key Qualifications:
His carreer has been focused on "engineering processes" to accelerate the transition towards sustainability by creating a critical mass and by empowering each individual as a human being acting as citizen, shareholder, consumer, investor, encouraging them to take responsibility, be open to dialogue and build trust, be willing to move from dialogue to join action.

Today he leads the EPE programme "Eco-innovation" with its 3 projects:

• The European Efficiency Alliance
• The Public-Private Platform on Green Investments
• The Supply chain, Sustainable Trade and Innovation with two pilot projects in Indonesia.

From passive to active corporate responsibility working with Companies, Public Authorities and Civil Society on how to "anticipate rapid convergence between CSR-Sustainable Development Strategy-Strategic Risk Management" with a focus on Responsible Investment and Sustainable Purchasing.

A profile of change agent.
He facilitated meetings for the organisations he was running with

• The successive Presidents of the European Commission Jacques Delors, Jacques Santer, Romano Prodi
• The first European environment informal council meeting with environmental NGO's (Dresden) and the first Enviornmental NGO's meeting with the European Council President
• John Paul II, the Presidents of the French Republic François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, HRH the Prince of Wales, HRH Prince Philippe of Belgium,
• The OECD Secretary General, the WTO Director General
• and met with Commissioners, CEO's and other civil society leaders.

So when and where, as change agent, has he been able to "influence" a process, to "empower people" ?

• When, being Secretary general of the European Environmental Bureau, ( since the Dublin Declaration till 1997), he was instrumental in the changes towards the "greening" of the EU Treaty and the integration of sustainable development as an objective.
• When, as Secretary General of the European Environmental Bureau again he launched a campaign in favour of an International UNECE Convention and convinced EU NGO's to support this proposal and governents to take the relay for what became the Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Access to Justice and Participation
• When, as rapporteur of the Permanent Forum of Civil Society, he launched the drafting of a European Citizens Charter which paved the way towards the Charter of Fundamental Rights now embodied in the draft Constitution
• When, in this framework he proposed a chapter on "participatory democracy", ideas which were relayed by Members of the Forum and of the Convention and are now part ot the Constitution
• When he initiated the Program Renaissance Europe, addressing the "European dream"
• When he proposed a merge of the Lisbon (competitiveness) and Gothenburg (sustainability) processes and the lauching of a Convention III towards a European Social Contract for a Well-Being Society.

Engineering partnerships for sustainable development.
He also worked as an "engineer" of dialogue, partnership and synergies towards sustainability between NGO's as well as between NGO's and business, trade unions, public authorities:

• When, as the Secretary General of Inter Environnement Wallonie he launched a series of meetings in Wallonia, with the Business walloon Federation (UWE) and Environemntal NGO's on clean technologies
• When chairing the Walloon Multi-stakeholder Council on Environment on environmental impact assessment and the state of the environment
• When as EEB Secretary general he initiated the G8 of environnemental NGO's.
• When as EEB Secretary general he engineered European Partners for the Environment as a safe place for dialogue and multi-stakeholders sustainable development partnership
• When, as Executive director of the European Partners for the Environment, he took the relay and engineerd the Sustainable Trade and Innovation Center concept and promoted actions towards sustainable trade and purchasing.
• When, as Executive director of the European Partners for the Environment, he took the relay and facilitated a process to engineer a European Micro-credit Guarantee Fund and a European support process to green investments
• When, he proposed a European Convention III shaping a "Well being Societal Model" to take the relay of the well-fare and the neo-liberal models.
• When he proposed a Lisbon II and a new European competitiveness approach.
• Today leading the programme on "Enhanced co-operation for sustainable investment"

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