Stefaan De Rynck

Stefaan De Rynck is a European Union civil servant and a Visiting Professor at KU Leuven University, where he teaches a graduate course on European Union policymaking. He has published in academic journals and books on banking policy, regional and local development, EU institutional reform, education and environment policy. In 2023, De Rynck’s book on his experience of the Brexit negotiations (“Inside the Deal. How the EU got Brexit done”) was selected by the Financial Times for its best summer books on politics. De Rynck gave various keynote speeches at international negotiation conferences based on his book. 

Before becoming a Visiting Professor at KU Leuven in 2020, De Rynck taught graduate courses at the Collegio Carlo Alberto (Turin, Italy) and the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium) on EU decision-making and on the role of regional governments in the EU. He was a Senior Fellow at Boston University’s Center for the Study of Europe in 2013. 

Stefaan De Rynck currently serves as Principal Advisor to the Director-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries in the European Commission. From 2021 until 2024, he was the official Representative of the Commission in Belgium, creating a bridge between the work of the European Union's executive and Belgian politics and society. Previously, he worked as Senior Adviser to Michel Barnier, the EU Chief Brexit Negotiator (2016-2021). 

De Rynck’s experience in EU policies includes sustainable urban and regional development, financial services, banking regulation, the single market, free movement of capital, and transport policy. He was part of the team that created the EU's banking union in 2013 to manage the sovereign debt and Euro-crisis. De Rynck has experience with crisis management and communications as spokesperson and political advisor for various Members of the European Commission. 

He has a Ph.D. in Political Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence, with a specialisation in comparative public policy. He was a Yale University World Fellow in 2006. Throughout his career as an EU civil servant, De Rynck has regularly appeared in European media and participated in public debates. At Yale, he will work on strategic challenges facing the European Union, and on stakeholder engagement and new modes of inclusive governance in EU ocean policy.