Patrick ten Brink Patrick was appointed EEB Secretary General on 1 July 2022.
Patrick provides political leadership across all the organisation’s policy areas. He oversees the daily management and fundraising of the association and supervises the staff. He leads the EEB senior management team and the strategic work of the organisation and prepares the work of the different EEB governance bodies together with the EEB President.
Patrick also represents the EEB and its member organisations vis-à-vis the EU institutions and in other relevant fora. He is currently a member of a range of high-level groups, including the Fit for Future Platform, Zero Pollution Stakeholder Platform, the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance, the Industrial Forum, the Chemicals Sustainability roundtable and the EU Biodiversity Platform.
Patrick ten Brink joined the EEB as EU Policy Director in 2018 and in 2020 he also became the Deputy Secretary General. Ever since he joined, he has been particularly active on the European Green Deal, EU Presidency work, 8EAP, Better Regulation and green fiscal reform.
Before joining the EEB, Patrick was the Director of IEEP-Brussels and head of its Green Economy Programme. He has worked extensively on circular economy and marine litter, green tax reform, subsidy reform, climate policy, and biodiversity policy. His past work contributed to the Passenger Cars and CO2 regulation, the Industrial Emissions Directive, the Regulation on Invasive Alien Species, and the Regulation on Access and Benefits Sharing of genetic resources.
Patrick has published widely, with books on environmental harmful subsidies, on the multiple values of nature and on voluntary environmental agreements, and articles on better regulation, the benefits of EU law, sustainable development, biodiversity policy, transport policy, marine litter, ecological tax reform, green economy, eco-industries and environmental employment, the costs of climate mitigation and EU enlargement.
He has a master’s degree in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and a Joint honours Physics and Philosophy degree.