Inge Ceuppens is Policy Officer defence in the defence 2 Unit of DG Grow in the European Commission since September 2017.
She is responsible for policy development in the area of EU defence research, with a focus on European Defence Fund. She was part of the team that developed the Impact Assessment accompanying the proposal for a Regulation of the European Defence Fund (COM(2018)476), analyzing the problems of the sector and assessing the impacts of the measures proposed. She has day-to-day responsibilities for the Preparatory Action for Defence Research and works with many stakeholders in the Member States, the military and industry to make the programme a success. She also deals with EU-NATO cooperation.
Inge Ceuppens graduated from University of Antwerp (Belgium) with a Master’s degree in Political Science/International Politics, in 1989, and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Delaware (U.S.A), in 1993. She worked for many years at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and the University of Maastricht (the Netherlands), and at the U.S. Mission to the EU, in Brussels. From 2009-2011, she worked at the European Commission, DG Connect, and managed cybersecurity research projects. She set up the Preparatory Action for Defence Research, in close cooperation with the European Commission, when she was R&T Programme Manager at the European Defence Agency from 2011 until 2017.
Inge Ceuppens is a Belgian national; she lived in France, Italy and the U.S.A.