Thomas Jakl

Thomas Jakl is Deputy Director-General of the Ministry of Environment of Austria, which is responsible for chemicals policy. He is the former chair of the Management Board of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and served as ECHA's president from 2008 until September 2012. He is currently President of the Governing Board and "Ambassador" of the EU's Human Biomonitoring programme HBM4EU.

Dr Jakl’s field of expertise includes legislation on chemical substances at the national, European and international levels. He has held a number of high-level policy positions, including as head of the EU Presidency delegation to international negotiations in the field of chemicals policy, and as former president of the EU Council working group on international environmental policy (chemicals) and Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH). During Austria's EU Presidency in 2018, he designed and implemented a special policy programme to integrate resource efficiency and effectiveness evaluation as political goals into chemicals policy. He has led the Austrian delegation at a number of multilateral environmental negotiations, including the Montreal Protocol, Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, Stockholm Convention, Rotterdam Convention and SAICM. He has also been responsible for sector-specific policies for organic solvents, nanomaterials, pesticides, detergents, endocrine disrupters, among others.

Dr Jakl is a prominent public speaker who addresses global issues pertaining to sustainable development, the circular economy and environmental management. He is a prolific writer credited with over 100 publications in newspapers, journals and books on environmental and science-related issues. As one of the most influential thinkers on the subject of sustainable chemical management, and an ambassador of Chemical Leasing, he co-authored "Chemical Leasing" and "Chemical Leasing goes Global."