Stefaan De Rynck is an EU official, currently serving as Principal Advisor to the Director-General of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries. Until September 2024, he was the Head of the European Commission Representation in Belgium, a mandate which coincided with the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU. From 2016 until 2021, he was Senior Advisor to the EU’s Chief Brexit Negotiator, Michel Barnier, in charge of strategy and outreach. He published a book “Inside the Deal – How the EU Got Brexit Done” on his experience with the EU-UK negotiations (AgendaPublishing, 2023).

De Rynck joined the European Commission in 1995. He was a Head of Unit in various departments (Financial Markets and Regulation, Single Market, and Communications) and worked on urban policy and sustainable urban development. He was a Spokesperson at the European Commission for the Convention on the Constitutional Treaty (2001-2004) and for Transport policy. He has a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (Florence) and is a visiting professor at the Public Governance Institute of the University of Leuven in Belgium. He taught earlier on EU politics and policy at the Collegio Carlo Alberto (University of Turin) and the College of Europe (Bruges). De Rynck has published in academic journals and books on cohesion policy, local development, the creation of the EU’s banking union, employment policy, education and environment policy. He worked as an evaluation expert on EU cohesion policy programmes prior to joining the Commission.