H.E. Gerard de Graaf

Biography

Gerard de Graaf is a European Commission official who serves as Senior Envoy for Digital to the United States and head of the European Union Office in San Francisco, a post he took up on 1 September 2022. He joined the Commission in 1991, after working for the Benelux Economic Union and the Schengen secretariat on free movement within the EU, and from 1997 to 2001 was trade counselor at the Commission’s Delegation to the United States in Washington, DC.

He later worked in the Commission’s Secretariat-General, DG Research and Innovation and DG Internal Market. As a Director in DG CNECT, he was responsible for areas including the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, telecommunications and audiovisual policy, cybersecurity and ICT standardization, and he co-chaired two EU-US Trade and Technology Council working groups. He studied economic geography and regional planning at the Free University Amsterdam and European economics and law at the Catholic University of Leuven.