Gereon Thiele
Former Head of Unit State Aid, Directorate-General Competition, European Commission, Brussels
Gereon Thiele is a retired German lawyer who studied law with languages from 1980 to 1986 at the universities of Cologne, Passau and Cardiff (Wales). He obtained a PhD from the University of Passau in 1997 and lectured German and European Law at the University of East Anglia from 1991 to 1994. Between 1994 and 1998 he held various positions as a lawyer within regional and federal German ministries and, from 1996 to 1997, he run the start-up phase of the European Centre for the Regions (ECR) in Barcelona, a branch of EIPA Maastricht. From 1998 he was an official of the European Commission where he held different positions in the audit and legal departments of the Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural Development (DG AGRI). Between March 2012 and December 2019, he headed the Unit within DG AGRI responsible for State aid in the agricultural sector and, from January 2020 to June 2023, he was the Head of the Unit in charge of State aid in the agricultural and fisheries sectors within the Directorate General for Competition (DG COMP). Gereon retired on 1 July 2023.