A career full of twists and turns
Jean-Charles de Cordes on a varied working life in which he has followed his passions.
Jean-Charles de Cordes, a 45-year-old, has had nine jobs in the 19 years since he began his professional career in Belgium’s federal office for refugees. That is not counting the three different positions he has held with the Council of Europe, which he re-joined last month, or his year-long military service, at the end of which he was a non-commissioned officer in charge of an infantry platoon. But it does count, as part of the 19 years, the first half of this year, after finishing a job with the European Commission – when he took a step back from his professional obligations to think about starting a company, to spend more time with his two children, and to play some golf in Scotland.
Click Here: cheap all stars rugby jersey
De Cordes, who describes himself as “passionate” and someone who “follows his interests”, is not a man who enjoys routine tasks or being deskbound. But for all that, his career has had certain constants. The first is geographical: with the exception of two years when he worked for the United Nations in Croatia and Western Sahara, de Cordes has spent his entire working life in Brussels and Strasbourg. (Between the ages of six and 11, he lived in Washington, DC, where his father worked for the World Bank.)
The other constant is international affairs – not an obvious choice for someone who says that his “natural environment” is business rather than public policy. After a first degree in law, de Cordes graduated in international and public affairs from the Université Catholique de Louvain in 1992, and joined Belgium’s refugee office just as asylum applications were on the rise. He conducted interviews with asylum-seekers and later co-ordinated the legal unit in charge of Asia. He had to deal with difficult situations, he says, but also had a lot of responsibility in an office with a young workforce and a flat hierarchy.
Early in 1997, de Cordes joined the UN-run transitional administration for Eastern Slavonia, a Serb-controlled region in Croatia that was being handed over to Croatian control after the 1991-95 war. Later that year, he moved to Laâyoune, in Western Sahara, to assist in a local census ahead of a referendum that in the end never took place.
Diplomatic role
After a year-long interlude as a private consultant and nine months with the UN Development Programme in Brussels, de Cordes moved to Strasbourg. For the first year, during Belgium’s turn in the rotating presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers, he was a deputy to Belgium’s ambassador to the Council of Europe. De Cordes, who says that he always dreamed of entering the diplomatic service, thinks that he would not have achieved as much had he actually done so. “I enjoy liaising with people, facilitating, fighting for issues that I believe in,” he says.
From Belgium’s permanent representation he moved to the Council of Europe secretariat, early in 2002. After two years working on policy development with central and eastern European countries, he became head of the Council’s cybercrime and organised crime unit. Following a brief spell with EurActiv, a media company, as director of EU affairs, he signed a three-year contract with the Commission’s development department, where he co-ordinated regional thematic programmes for the countries of the eastern neighbourhood.
After his contract was up, and after his half-year of reflection and golfing, de Cordes re-joined the Council of Europe, in its Brussels liaison office, where he is now in charge of co-ordination on technical co-operation with the EU institutions. He describes his job now as “trying to create a match between the priorities of the two organisations, to present ideas and see whether funding might be available”.
Does working abroad again still hold attractions? “If you want to have a normal life with your family you have to make a choice,” he says. “There are few places in the world that can beat the quality of life that we have here in Brussels.”