Hilde Hardeman

Hilde Hardeman is a European civil servant of Belgian nationality who has served as Director-General of the Publications Office (PO) of the European Union (EU) since December 2021. Hardeman previously served as Director of the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI) from 2017 to 2021, and as Deputy Head of Cabinet to the Vice-President of the European Commission for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, Jyrki Katainen, from 2014 to 2017.

Life Hilde Hardeman is a Slavonist by training, having been awarded a PhD in Slavic Philology and History, with the honours of summa cum laude, from KU Leuven. She undertook her graduate studies and doctoral research across a number of institutions, namely Stanford University in California, the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, the Institute for the History of the USSR - part of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union - in Moscow, as well as the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.

Following the obtention of her doctoral degree, she remained at KU Leuven, affiliated to the Leuven Institute for Central and East European Studies, as a post-doctoral scholar on the legal protection of minorities in Central and Eastern Europe. During this period, Hardeman also undertook consultancy work on issues concerning her region of specialisation for, inter alia, the European Parliament, the King Baudouin Foundation and the Centre for European Policy Studies.

In 2011, Hardeman joined the Secretariat-General as Head of the Briefings Unit for the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. She served as the Deputy Head of Cabinet of Vice-President Jyrki Katainen from 2014 to 2021, before becoming Director of the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments from 2017 to 2021 and, subsequently, Director-General of the Publication Office from 2021 onwards. In this roles, Hardeman has taken a stronger lead on external representation of the Commission, including at multilateral gatherings such as the Paris Peace Forum.

Leading the EU's Publication Office, Hardeman has contributed to the modernisation of the Official Journal of the European Union and has taken an active role in support of Ukraine, printing schoolbooks for Ukrainian children in partnership with the Ukrainian authorities and under the Erasmus+ programme.

Hilde Hardeman has been a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, where she taught on the history of Russia and Eastern Europe. Alongside her native Dutch, she also speaks English, French, German, Italian and Russian.