Pierre DEFRAIGNE is director of EUR-IFRI of the Brussels branch of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) in Paris, and former deputy director general of the Directorate General for Trade at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. He is also the former head of cabinet for Pascal Lamy, European Commissioner for Trade. Mr. Defraigne teaches European economic policy at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. An economist, he began his career as a civil servant with the European Commission in 1970. From 1970 to 1974, Mr. Defraigne was a member of the cabinets of several European Commissioners. From 1974 to 1976, he was the head of the Unit for Agricultural, Regional, and Social Budgets in the Directorate General XIX for Budgets. He served as the chief of the Cabinet of Industrial Affairs from 1977 to 1983. From 1985 to 1999, Mr. Defraigne was the director for north-south relations in the Directorate General for External Relations. Mr. Defraigne's interests include international economic policies, political economy, and north-south relations. He received a B.A. in political and social sciences and a B.A. in economics from the University of Liège. Mr. Defraigne was a faculty member at Salzburg Seminar Session 420: Trade, Aid and Development: Policy Tools for Poverty Reduction, 2004.