Valérie Verbruggen

Valérie Verbruggen obtained her law degree at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), and holds two specialist degrees in the protection of human rights and international public law, respectively from the Facultés universitaires St Louis (FUSL - Brussels) and the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden (the Netherlands).

She started her career as a lawyer at the Brussels bar, where she practised for 7 years. Afterwards she was professor O. Deschutter's assistant in the creation and the legal coordination of the EU network of independent experts in fundamental rights - the predecessor of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights – as well as in his work as the expert for Belgium and as professor at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL). Having acquired this experience, she started working as a legal advisor at the Belgian Commission for the Protection of Privacy, where she is currently in charge of European and international data protection issues (Article 29 Working Party of the European Union, Council of Europe) in particular.