Mr. Thanasis Zounos

Thanasis Zounos is an agronomist from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki with postgraduate studies in the University of Aberdeen, Scotland on crop protection. He has been working at the Ministry of Rural Development and Food for the last 23 years, 16 of which in the Department of Plant Protection Products while the last 7 in the Department of Plant Protection where he also serves as Head. In the Plant Protection Product department, his main objective was biocidal products. He was the Greek representative in the EU during the discussions on the preparation of the EU regulation 528/2012 concerning biocidal products, a member of the EU Biocidal Products Committee, a national expert, and a member of several working groups on biocides. Since 2017, he has been the Greek national expert in the EU working group for the implementation of Directive 128/2009/EU (SUD) on the Sustainable Use of PPPs and lately member of the Greek delegation in the ongoing discussions held in the Council of the EU for the regulation proposed by the European Commission for the sustainable use of pesticides (SUR). His responsibilities include the implementation of integrated plant protection in Greece, the monitoring of the European indicators of the use of plant protection products HR 1 and 2, the preparation and updating of the guides of integrated plant protection per crop, the provision of knowledge to the farmers in matters of integrated plant protection, the approval of plant protection formulations containing Biological Control Agents (BCAs), the organization and the supervision of the National program for the protection of olive cultivation from the olive fruit fly etc.