Michel A. G. Carpentier

Biography

Michel Carpentier was Director-General for Telecommunications, Information Market and Exploitation of Research (DG XIII) at the European Commission, Brussels, Belgium. DG XIII is responsible for the creation and implementation of a European Telecommunications policy in all its different aspects: an adequate regulatory framework, the establishment of advanced transeuropean networks, European cohesion, international commercial relations, and the social and society-oriented factors. It also contributes to the setting up of transeuropean telematique networks in areas of great socioeconomic importance such as health, education and transport. DG XIII is also responsible for the spreading and exploitation of knowledge resulting from Community R&D programmes and for the promotion of a European information market.

Mr. Carpentier has extensive experience both in R&D and industrial policy. After having been Administrator in the French Atomic Energy Commission, he became Head of the R&D contracts division at EURATDM (1958) and later Head of Division at the Directorate-General for Industrial, Technological and Scientific Affairs at the newly created Commission of the European Communities. He then created the Environment and Consumer Protection Service which he headed for a period often years, first as Director and later as Director-General. In this role, he developed a Community environment policy, associating the protection of the environment with economic development.

In 1981, Mr. Carpentier became Director-General at the Energy Directorate-General mainly responsible for Community programmes related to new energy sources and energy-saving and relations and agreements with developing countries. In 1983, he set up a Task Force for Information Technologies and Telecommunications with special responsibility for the ESPRIT (European Strategic Programme for Research and Development in Information Technology) and RACE (Research and Development in Advanced Communications Technologies in Europe) programmes. In 1986, with the addition of the Commission's services responsible for information market and innovation, Mr. Carpentier became Director-General of DG XIII.

Mr. Carpentier was a graduate of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (business administration), Ecole des Sciences Politiques of Paris, and of the Faculty of Law and Economics of the University of Paris. Mr. Carpentier was a Foreign Member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Engineering Sciences and Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Company oflnformation Technologists, London. He was doctor es Science honoris causa of Loughborough Technological University and of Madrid Polytechnical University.

Mr. Carpentier is co-author of Telecommunications in Transition, published in 1992 by Wiley.

Mr. Carpentier was married and has four children. He was a reserve officer in the French Navy and Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur.