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Dr. Charalambos Kasimis

Charalambos Kasimis is a Professor at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of the Agricultural University of Athens. In March 2015, he was appointed as Secretary General of Agricultural Policy and Management of European Funds of the Ministry of Rural Development and Food, in charge of CAP, Rural Development and Fisheries Development Programmes of Greece as well as International Relations. He completed his term in office in July 2019.

He has served as the Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development (2013-2014) and as the Director of the Postgraduate Studies MSc. Programme “Integrated Rural Development and Management of Rural Space” (2010-2014). Between September 2014 and March 2015, he was appointed as Deputy Rector of the Agricultural University of Athens. In the period 1986-2003 he served as a member of staff at the Department of Economics of the University of Patras and between 1995 and 2000 as the Director of the Institute of Urban and Rural Sociology at the National Centre for Social Research. For a number of years, he served as a member of the Executive Committee of the European Society for Rural Sociology and between 2013 and 2015 as President.

His academic interests focus on issues of rural transformation and development in Greece, the Balkans and the Mediterranean region and more particularly on family farming, employment and rural community change. Migration and, more precisely, the implications of international migration on rural regions have become one of his main research topics in the past years. In the crisis years he dealt with the study of the implications of the economic crisis upon the rural areas and the ‘return to the land’ movement in Greece.

Since 2016 Charalampos Kasimis is Vice President and member of the Governing Board of the International Center for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies (CIHEAM).

Between 2018 -2019 he served as Executive Board member of the Organisation “Enterprise Greece”.

Dr. Philip Papadopoulos

Dr. Philip Papadopoulos holds a PhD from London School of Economics and is currently the Director of the Strategic Project Management Office of the American Farm School (AFS). In this capacity he is responsible for the Agrifood Entrepreneurship Centres run by AFS in the cities of Thessaloniki and Kalamata, and oversees training and consultancy projects in over thirty locations throughout Greece. Building and managing multi-actor alliances between research institutes, civil society institutions and the real economy is one of his core activities.

His fields of interest include Consumer Behavior related to the Mediterranean Diet, Alternative Tourism, Food Anthropology, Entrepreneurship, E-commerce, Organizational Culture & Climate, Leadership and Management, including motivation and performance management.

Mr. Georges Kremlis

Mr. Georges Kremlis started his career in the European Union in 1981. He was a Legal advisor (from January 1981) in the European Commission’s Legal Service, with an interruption of three years (1990-1993) in Greece. In that period he exercised the functions of Advisor to the Greek Minister of National Economy (1990), National Co-ordinator for the European Economic Community (EEC) internal market (1990-1992), Head of the EEC Committee under the Greek Prime Minister (1993), and Secretary General for European Affairs in the Ministry of National Economy (1993). During this period he was also a Member of the Greek Competition authority.

In 1995 he joined DG Environment. From 1995 to 2004 he served as Head of the Legal Unit, responsible for all legal issues in the DG, including, inter alia, the legality of new initiatives, the implementation of EC environmental legislation and investigation of national compliance with EC Directives and Regulations; handling of complaints, infringements, EU Ombudsman requests and Petitions. From 2004 to 2005 he was Head of the “Legal affairs and Governance” Unit, responsible for in-house legal advice, Århus Convention (access to environmental information, public participation and access to justice), Environmental Liability, Environmental Criminality, the IMPEL Network that he co-chaired, the Forum of Judges and the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement (INECE), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and the financing of NGO’s programme. From June 2005 to May 2013 he was the Head of the Unit “Cohesion Policy and Environmental Impact Assessments”, responsible for the overall integration of the environment in the Cohesion Policy (ERDF, ESF, Cohesion Fund), the Trans-European Networks for Energy and Transport, and EIB/EBRD loans.

In his current position, since June 2013, he is the Head of the “Mainstreaming and Environmental Assessments” Unit (former “Enforcement, Cohesion Policy & European Semester, Cluster 1” Unit), responsible for the enforcement of EU environmental law and of the compliance with environmental law of projects (and plans and programmes) co-financed by the EU as well as the evaluation of their impacts. He is also responsible for environmental integration in Cohesion Policy and the Trans-European Networks for Energy and Transport.

From March to August 2011, he served as Acting Director of the Directorate “Legal Affairs and Cohesion” and from June 2013 to January 2014 as Director ad interim of the Directorate “Implementation, Governance and Semester”.

In his current position, he is Chairman of the ENEA-MA (European Network of Environmental and Managing Authorities) and the EIA/SEA (Environmental Impact Assessment / Strategic Environmental Assessment) Experts Groups. He is also a Member of the Board of the Espoo Convention.

He has also served as a member of the Board of the National Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development in Greece, and as a member of the Greek Regulatory Authority for Energy (RAE). He is Founding and Honorary President of the Hellenic Environmental Law Association.

He is a lawyer of the Greek Supreme Court and in the past he has been a Research fellow at the Centre of International Economic and European Law (1979-80), in Thessaloniki. He is visiting Professor in a number of universities, in Greece and abroad, especially in post-graduate studies. He is the co-author of a four volumes

Ms. Alexandra Nikolakopoulou

Alexandra Nikolakopoulou received her law degree from the University of Athens after which she was called to the Athens Bar. She completed her DEA in European law at the University of Toulouse. After three years working for the legal Unit of the European Commission’s Consumer Protection Directorate General she joined EuroCommerce, the European Association of retail and wholesale companies, where she worked as a food law advisor.

She joined DG SANTE in 2003 (ex DG SANCO) where she serves today as Head of Unit in the Unit ‘Farm to Fork Strategy’ in the Food Safety Directorate. She has been leading and coordinating the work for the adoption the EU Farm to Fork Strategy and she is in charge of some of the main initiatives of the strategy such as on the general framework for sustainable food systems, front of pack labelling and nutrient profiles, origin labelling, sustainable labelling, food waste.

Throughout her career in DG SANTE she has been dealing with issues relating to food labelling and general food law. More specifically she was responsible for the preparation, negotiation and adoption of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of Food Information to Consumers and of the recent Transparency Regulation.

Dr. Dionysia-Theodora Avgerinopoulou

Dr. Dionysia-Theodora Avgerinopoulou, M.P., is a leading future in Environmental Law and Policy. She currently serves as a Member of the Hellenic Parliament and the Chair of the Special Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Environmental Protection and its Subcommittee of the Watercourses of the Hellenic Parliament.

She has served as the Vice-Chair of the Steering Committee of the Global Water Partnership Organization in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Head of Water of the Commission on Environment and Energy of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, France. Dr. Avgerinopoulou has also served as the Chairperson of the Standing Committee for the UN Affairs of the Inter- Parliamentary Union, in Geneva, Switzerland, Chairperson of the Circle of the Mediterranean Parliamentarians on Sustainable Development, and the Vice-Chair for the Mediterranean Commission for Sustainable Development, in Athens, Greece.

Dionysia received a first degree in Law from the Faculty of Law of the National and Kapodestrian University of Athens, Greece and an LL.M. in International Legal Studies from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C. She also holds a Doctorate in International Environmental Law (J.S.D.) from Columbia University School of Law in New York, NY. Dionysia is the author of several articles and a book on environmental and international issues and has presented her work at several international conferences. She teaches Public International Law, International Environmental Law, European Environmental Law, Law of Sustainable Development, Global Environmental Governance and Climate Change Law.

Dionysia is an attorney-at-law by profession. She has previously worked, among others, at the Legal Service of the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium, the Permanent Mission of the European Union at the United Nations in New York, U.S.A., the Center on Environmental and Land Use Law of the New York University School of Law in New York, the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Yale Law School in New Haven, C.T., U.S.A. and the International and Foreign Law Institute in Athens, Greece.

She has been elected four times as a Member of the Hellenic Parliament and three times as the Chairperson of the Special Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Environmental Protection and its Subcommittee of the Watercourses. She has served as President of the Parliamentary Committee of Friendship between Greece and Botswana, Vice-Chair of the Parliamentary Committee of Friendship between Greece and Norway, Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee of Friendship between Greece and the Netherlands, and a Member of the Parliamentary Committees of Friendship between Greece and Albania, Canada, Japan, Israel,  Kenya, Singapore, U.S.A., and Russia. She has served as the Deputy Secretary of Volunteerism and NGOs and the Deputy Head of the Environmental Policy Sector of the New Democracy Party. Dr. Avgerinopoulou was a member of the Committee regarding the Genetically Modified Organisms of the Greek Ministry for Environment, Energy and Climate Change, and the parliamentary representative of her Party for the Law on Biodiversity that implemented the 2011-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and introduced the National Biodiversity Strategy for Greece.

In 2011, Dr. Avgerinopoulou was elected as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum for her global leadership in environmental protection issues. In the same year, she received the “Green Star” Award by UNEP/OCHA/Green Cross International for her efforts in preventing and responding to environmental emergencies and natural disasters. She was also selected among the “40Under40” of the EU. In 2010, she also received a Special Congressional Recognition for her “outstanding efforts and invaluable contributions on behalf of Hellenic Students and the environment” and the Global Citizenship Award for Leadership in Assisting Humanity by Orphans International Worldwide in 2010. In 2009, she received the international Goddess Artemis Award by the Euro-American Women’s Council for her contribution to transatlantic cooperation between the U.S. and the EU on environmental and climate change issues.

She speaks Greek, English, French, German and Spanish. She is the mother of one young boy.