EuropaWorld 9/11/2001 PASCAL LAMY

Pascal Lamy was born in the Levallois-Perret suburb of Paris on 8 April 1947. Growing up in a devastated post-war Europe he was a diligent student and graduated from France's leading business school - the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. He went on to study political science at the Paris Institute of Political Sciences before enrolling at the civil service college, the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, which led to his first professional appointment at the French Finance Ministry.

Pascal Lamy began his career in the Ministry's auditing agency in 1975 and transferred to the Treasury Department four years later. A shrewd understanding of both finance and politics led to his appointment as an adviser to the then Minister for Finance and Economic Affairs, Jacques Delors. By 1983, within eight years of entering the civil service, he had become an advisor to the Prime Minister. After serving as Deputy Head of the Prime Minister's Private Office for two years, his career took on a more international angle as he was invited once again to aid his previous mentor Jaques Delors. The former finance minister had been appointed as President of the European Commission and Pascal Lamy became the Head of his private office in Brussels in 1985.

As the chief of staff for the EC President - and acting as his Representative at G7 and other Summits - Pascal Lamy faced considerable demands on his powers of management, negotiation and diplomacy. He also gained extensive experience of the workings of European governance. He held the position for nine years before returning to the financial field in 1994 when he joined Crédit Lyonnais. After working as part of the management team to oversee the bank's recovery he later became its Director-General. When the bank was privatised five years later the French government took the opportunity to return the proven skills of this banker and diplomat to a wider international sphere. He was appointed to the European Commission and in September 1999 the European Parliament confirmed him as the new European Commissioner for Trade.

Despite prior experience at the international level Pascal Lamy had a baptism of fire in his new role - his appointment to the EU's top trade job coming on the eve of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) liberalisation talks in Seattle. These talks later collapsed due to irreconcilable differences between member countries. A similar challenge now faces him as the fourth Ministerial Conference of the WTO meets again in Doha later this week. Europe will be watching to see if Pascal Lamy can reconcile differences and help ensure that the demands for a more transparent and equitable global trading system are met.