Karl-Johan (JUHANI) LÖNNROTH
Director‑General, Directorate-General for Translation of the European Commission
Karl-Johan Lönnroth (born in 1945) is graduated in Political Sciences (Master Degree, 1970, University of Helsinki) and, obtained a Master of Arts Degree at the University of Wisconsin (USA, 1972) and a diploma from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration in France, in addition to other studies in Germany, France and the USA.
Karl-Johan has a long experience of international cooperation involving the Nordic countries, OECD, UN, ILO and bilateral cooperation in Eastern Europe. He began his career at the Secretariat of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 1973 where after he participated extensively in the development of state administration and cross-sectoral cooperation within labour, employment, social, educational and economic policies as a member of several committees. He worked as a consultant for the OECD, the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Finnish Embassy in Stockholm.
Having worked within the Finnish Ministry of Labour until 1991 he went on to become Director at the ILO in Geneva. In 1996 he joined the European Commission as Director in the Directorate-General for Employment and Social Affairs and becoming Deputy Director-General in December 2000. In January 2004 he became the Director General of Directorate-General for Translation at the Commission which is the largest public language service in the world.
His language proficiency includes Finnish, Swedish, English, French and German and he speaks also Norwegian and Danish. He has studied also Spanish and Russian. He has written extensively on issues concerning labour, employment, migration, social, political, societal and multilingual issues.
(China.org.cn June 2, 2008)
