Noëlle LENOIR

Noëlle Lenoir is an Affiliate Professor at HEC, Paris where she is President of HEC Europe Institute, a place for training, dialogue and collaborative research toward the analysis of the socio-economic, political and business issues of Europe in the 21st century. Noëlle Lenoir is also President of the "Cercle des Européens", a think-tank she created in 2004 to promote exchanges and discussions on current European topics.

Trained in legal affairs (at Law school and Sciences Po., Paris), Noëlle Lenoir was a Principal Administrator of the Law Committee in the French Senate from 1972 to 1982, in charge of managing bills and laws related to criminal legislation, immigration, as well as the justice budget.

In 1982, Noëlle Lenoir joined the General Counsel of the newly created "National Commission for Information Control and Liberty" ("Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés"). In 1984, she joined the Council of State ("Conseil d'Etat") as a litigation Magistrate. In 1988, she was appointed Chief of Staff of the French Minister of Justice. In 1990, she became Special Adviser to the Prime Minister for legislation on bioethics. As the author of "Aux frontières de la vie: une éthique biomédicale à la française" (la Documentation Française, 1991), a report on the situation of bioethics in France, she participated in the drafting of the bioethics law which was adopted in 1994.

In 1992, Noëlle Lenoir was the first woman to be appointed member of the French Constitutional Supreme Court ("Conseil Constitutionnel"). Besides her function as Magistrate, Noëlle Lenoir chaired the International Bioethics Committee (IBC) within the UNESCO and was elected, by her peers, President of the European Group on Ethics (EGE), an advisory body to the European Commission President.

After having taught at Columbia University, Noëlle Lenoir was named Minister of European Affairs in 2002. During her service as Minister until 2004, she participated in numerous negotiations with countries in Central and Eastern Europe which were candidate to the EU, and to the drafting of the constitutional treaty. She represented France interests in regard to European financial and economic legislation. Finally, she was the first woman to take up the function of "General Secretary to French-German cooperation" together with the German Minister of European Affairs.

Noëlle Lenoir went on to be a lawyer in 2004. Within Jeantet and Associés since 2009, she supervises the firm's activities on EU regulation (public law and competition law).