Florika Fink-Hooijer is a
European civil servant at the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
. She leads the
Directorate General for the Environment, which holds large responsibilities under the
European Green Deal
The European Green Deal, approved 2020, is a set of policy initiatives by the European Commission with the overarching aim of making the European Union (EU) climate neutral in 2050. An impact assessed plan will also be presented to increase the ...
.
She joined the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body o ...
in 1990 and has held various high level management posts in the area of external and security policy, humanitarian aid,
disaster risk reduction
Disaster risk reduction (DRR) sometimes called disaster risk management (DRM) is a systematic approach to identifying, assessing and reducing the risks of disaster. It aims to reduce socio-economic vulnerabilities to disaster as well as dealing w ...
and environmental protection.
Early life and education
Fink-Hooijer was born in Darmstadt, Germany and grew up in Berlin. She studied law at the
Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms Universität Bonn, and the
Université de Lausanne before completing a master's degree in International and Comparative Law at the
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) () is a Dutch and English-speaking research university located in Brussels, Belgium.The Vrije Universiteit Brussel is one of the five universities officially recognised by the Flemish Community, Flemish gov ...
.
She later earned a PhD in copyright at the
Free University of Berlin
The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...
with a dissertation on the subject of immediate termination in copyright contract law.
Prior to joining the European Commission, she worked at the law firms such as Nordemann, Vinck & Hertin in
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...
, and
De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek
De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek N.V. is a Dutch law firm headquartered in Amsterdam with branch offices in Brussels, London, Shanghai and Singapore. The firm has 60 partners and 300 other qualified lawyers. The firm was founded in 1871.
Areas of ...
in
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...
.
European career
Fink-Hooijer started her career as a
European civil servant in the European Commission in 1990 where she first occupied positions as administrator in the internal market and the external policies department where she wrote extensively about EU policy.
In 1995, she became a member of the Cabinet of
Monika Wulf-Mathies
Monika Wulf-Mathies (born 1942) is a German politician, who was European Commissioner for Regional Policy.
Early life
Wulf-Mathies was born in the rural town of Wernigerode in 1942 after her family was evacuated from wartime Hamburg.
Career
In ...
, the Commissioner in charge of EU
Regional Policy
Regional policy is the sum of a series of policies formulated according to regional differences to coordinate regional relations and regional macro operation mechanism, which affects regional development at the macro level. It includes regional ec ...
. Fink-Hooijer was tasked with the development of the pre-accession instruments as part of the Agenda 2000.
From 1999 onwards, she helped create the
European Patent Convention
The European Patent Convention (EPC), also known as the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973, is a multilateral treaty instituting the European Patent Organisation and providing an autonomous legal system according to w ...
alongside new approaches on copyright, e-commerce and data protection in the digital age as part of Commissioner
Frits Bolkestein
Frederik "Frits" Bolkestein (; born 4 April 1933) is a retired Dutch politician and businessman who served as Leader of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) from 1990 to 1998 and European Commissioner for Internal Market from 199 ...
's cabinet responsible for Internal Market and Financial Services.
Between 2000 and 2010, she took up various middle management positions, first in Directorate-General (DG) RELEX (the predecessor of the
European External Action Service
The European External Action Service (EEAS) is the diplomatic service and combined foreign and defence ministry of the European Union (EU). The EEAS is led by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP), who is also ...
) and then in the
Secretariat-General. In this period, Fink-Hooijer contributed to the creation of numerous EU civilian crisis missions and early EU military structures as well as negotiating and implementing for the European Commission the
Kimberly Process Certification Scheme on conflict diamonds. She later became responsible for bilateral relations with South East Asia and the Monitoring and Certification Mechanism for Bulgaria and Romania.
In 2010, she headed the Cabinet of Vice-President
Kristalina Georgieva
Kristalina Ivanova Georgieva-Kinova ( bg, Кристалина Иванова Георгиева-Кинова; ; born 13 August 1953) is a Bulgarian economist serving as managing director of the International Monetary Fund since 2019. She was t ...
during her term as International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response Commissioner helping create the
European Emergency Response Coordination Centre and strengthen the EU Civil Protection Mechanisms.
In 2012, she became the first policy Director in the
working on the
Ebola Crisis
The 2013–2016 epidemic of Ebola virus disease, centered in West Africa, Western Africa, was the most widespread List of Ebola outbreaks, outbreak of the disease in history. It caused major loss of life and Socioeconomics, socioeconomic disr ...
and
Maritime Incident Response Groups. She substantially advanced the international role the EU plays in humanitarian aid and disaster risk reduction with the introduction of cash-based aid as well as gender and age sensitive aid.
She also was instrumental in creating the European Voluntary Humanitarian Aid Corps to strengthen local capacity and resilience of disaster-affected communities. As a policy director for humanitarian aid, she further shaped the civil-military cooperation mechanism for the better protection of civilians in emergencies.
In 2016, she was appointed as Director General of
DG Interpretation, the largest interpreting service in the world. Under her leadership, the first ever Knowledge Centre on Interpretation was created. She had spoken about the need to “futureproof” services by strengthening the skills of colleagues to work with new technologies.' as well as how
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
may be an (un)desired revolution in linguistic services. Subsequently, she drove forward the digitalization of the service by introducing features like automatic speech recognition and other support services to interpreters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she scaled up multilingual interpretation in hybrid meetings via new digital platforms and technologies, which was a "watershed moment" for the interpretation profession.
In 2020, Fink-Hooijer became Director General of the
Directorate General for Environment. She is responsible for implementing the
European Green Deal
The European Green Deal, approved 2020, is a set of policy initiatives by the European Commission with the overarching aim of making the European Union (EU) climate neutral in 2050. An impact assessed plan will also be presented to increase the ...
focusing on Circular Economy, Biodiversity and Zero Pollution. On behalf of the European Union, she has attended various summits, including the international Biodiversity Summits.
Personal life
She speaks German, English, Dutch and French fluently. She is married to fellow European Civil servant Johannes Jeroen Hooijer and has three children.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fink-Hooijer, Florika
1962 births
European civil servants
People from Darmstadt
Free University of Berlin alumni
University of Bonn alumni
University of Lausanne alumni
Vrije Universiteit Brussel alumni
Living people
Expatriates in Belgium
Expatriates in Switzerland
German expatriates in Belgium