Damien Levie

Head of Unit, Technology and Security, FDI Screening, DG Trade at European Commission

Speaker

Damien Levie currently heads the unit in charge of Strategic Trade and Investment Controls for Security, in the Directorate-General for Trade in the European Commission. In that capacity, he oversees the work of the screeners’ team on all FDI cases and chairs the EU Investment Screening Expert Group of Member States and the Commission internal FDI Screening network.

He also oversees the other teams in charge of (1) EU’s trade controls (dual-use export control regime and export sanctions of tech items viz. Russia & Belarus) – and (2) high tech sectors and trade.

Damien previously headed the Trade Policy Evaluation and Transparency Teams in DG TRADE and was a senior EU trade diplomat in Washington DC from 2014 to 2018 under Presidents Obama and Trump. He was also the EU deputy-chief negotiator for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership between the EU and the USA.

Before working fulltime on EU-US trade, he was a senior adviser in the Cabinet of EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht (2009-12) and a member of the Cabinet of Louis Michel, EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid (2005-09). Damien joined the European Commission in 2001, working on issues including merger control policy and REACH, the EU's basic chemical regulation.

Damien Levie has law degrees from KU Leuven and the University of Chicago Law School and an economics degree from UC Louvain. He was a lawyer at a major US law firm in Brussels and New York from 1994 to 2001.