Michel Hansenne

Michel Hansenne (born March 23, 1940 in Neupré , Province of Liège ) is a former Belgian politician of the Parti Social Chrétien (PSC), who was a member of the Senate for 15 years and minister in several governments of Prime Minister Wilfried Martens and Mark Eyskens for ten years . After he was Director General of the International Labor Organization (ILO) between 1989 and 1999 , he became a member of the European Parliament in 1999 and was a member of it until 2004.

Life

MP and Minister

After attending school, Hansenne completed a law degree at the University of Liège , graduating in 1963 with a doctorate in law . In addition, he completed a degree in economics and finance , which he completed with a licentiate . After completing this degree, he worked from 1962 to 1972 as a research assistant at the University of Liège and from 1972 to 1974 as advisor to Minister of Science Charles Hanin .

In 1974 Hansenne became a member of the Chamber of Deputies for the first time and represented the interests of the Parti Social Chrétien (PSC) there until 1989.

On April 3, 1979, he was appointed by Prime Minister Wilfried Martens to his first government and held the post of Minister for the in this and the subsequent second , third and fourth Martens government as well as the government of Prime Minister Mark Eyskens until December 17, 1981 French speaking community.

Prime Minister Martens appointed him Minister for Employment and Labor in his fifth government on December 17, 1981 . In this ministerial office he also remained in the sixth and seventh Martens government until May 9, 1988. He then served in the eighth Martens government between May 9, 1988 and March 2, 1989 as Minister for the Civil Service.

Director General of the ILO

After leaving the federal government and the Chamber of Deputies, Hansenne was elected in 1989 to succeed Francis Blanchard as the eighth Director General of the International Labor Organization (ILO), a specialized agency of the United Nations .

This made him the first General Director after the Cold War . His ten-year term of office was marked by a series of events and developments that lastingly solved the problems that the ILO had to deal with up until then. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism , the question of development models and aid for the Third World , the doubts about full employment in the industrialized countries and the emergence of globalization forced the organization and its secretariat to revise their working methods and tools.

His re-election for a second term in 1993 indicated that Hansenne's primary responsibility was to lead the ILO into the 21st century with all of the moral authority, professional competence and administrative capacity that the organization had enjoyed for 75 years.

The most important debates of the ILO during this period concerned globalization, the liberalization of trade and social justice . On June 18, 1998, the International Labor Conference adopted the Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights to Work, which stated that all ILO member states, by virtue of their membership, had an obligation to recognize, promote and implement the principles of fundamental workers' rights, regardless of whether or not they were had ratified the ILO conventions.

Furthermore, Hansenne made a significant contribution to leading the organization through the difficulties of implementing the institutional reform of the ILO and achieving international acceptance of the principles in the question of social justice. In addition, he tried to give the ILO a leading role in the important international forums for economic and social development. In addition, he initiated a course within the ILO of greater decentralization of activities and resources in the active partnership policy of the organization.

After ten years as General Director of the ILO, Hansenne was replaced by Juan Somavía on March 4, 1999 .

Member of the European Parliament

In the 1999 European elections , Hansenne was elected a member of the European Parliament and was a member of it for the fifth electoral term until July 19, 2004.

As a member of the Parti Social Chrétien (PSC) and since November 17, 2003 of the Center Démocrate Humaniste (CDH), he belonged to the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) . During his parliamentary membership he was a member of the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research and Energy and a member of the Delegation for relations with Japan . In addition, he was a deputy member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs and temporarily from January 17 to January 29, 2002 of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism.

Publications

• Un garde-fou pour la mondialisation. Le BIT dans l'après-guerre froide , 1999

Web links

• Entry on the ILO homepage
• Entry on Michel Hansenne in the Members' database of the European Parliament
• biography