Thomas Jakl


Thomas Jakl is the former chair of the European Chemicals Agency's Management board and is Deputy Director General of the Austrian Environment Ministry responsible for Chemicals Policy. His field of activity includes legislation on chemical substances at the national, European and UN levels. He served as ECHA's president from 2008 until September 2012. He is president of the Governing Board and "Ambassador" of the EU's Human Biomonitoring program "HBM4EU".

Education

Dr. Thomas Jakl has worked in different high level policy positions, including the Head of EU-Presidency delegation for international negotiations in the field of chemicals policy during the Austrian Presidencies in 1998, 2006 and 2018, and as former President of EU Council working group on international environmental policy and Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals. During Austria's third EU- Presidency 2018 he designed and implemented a special policy program to integrate resource efficiency and effectiveness evaluation as political goals into Chemicals Policy.
Dr. Jakl has led the Austrian delegation to the negotiating bodies for multilateral environmental agreements such as Montreal Protocol, Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, Stockholm Convention, the Rotterdam Convention, SAICM etc. He has been responsible for sector specific policies for organic solvents, nanomaterials, pesticides, detergents, endocrine disrupters etc.
Dr. Jakl is a prominent public speaker who addresses global issues pertaining to sustainable development, circular economy and environmental management. He is a prolific writer credited with over 100 publications in high quality newspapers, journals and books on various societal and environmental — science related issues.
Dr. Jakl is one of the most influential thinkers on the subject of sustainable chemical management, and the foremost propounder of Chemical Leasing. He is the co-author of "Chemical Leasing" and "Chemical Leasing goes Global." He has pioneering contributions to the fields of scientific and technical risk assessment of substances and products, best practice diffusion for the production and application of chemical products.

Membership of professional bodies