The Council is composed of four members, i.e. one chairman and three are ordinary members. They are appointed by the King for a six-year term on the minister’s proposal and by a decree deliberated in the Council of Ministers. The Council members work full time.
Composition of the Council
Michel Van Bellinghen, chairman of the Council
Michel Van Bellinghen chairs the BIPT Council and is responsible for the following departments: Purchase and Logistics, Budget and Finance, Communications, Translation, International Relations and Registry.
Michel Van Bellinghen, Master of Laws (UCL), started off at the university in 1990 as a researcher, then became an assistant under the supervision of Professor Françoise Tulkens, at the UCL Laws Centre for Criminal Law.
He became an assistant advisor at the Ministry of Justice in 1992 under the supervision of Professor Marc Bossuyt and joined BIPT in 1997. From 1999 to 2003 he held the position of expert at the private office of Rik Daems, who was the Federal Telecommunications Minister at the time, and afterwards took up the function of Assistant Head of the Private Office. From 2003 until 2009 he was nominated Member of the BIPT Council for the first time. Following this mandate he remained closely affiliated to the Council and supervised the legal department of the regulator during a number of years. He has written scientific publications. In 2013 he held a position on the Council as a Member. In January 2017 he was assigned Chairman of the BIPT Council.
Axel Desmedt, member of the Council
Axel Desmedt is heading the Telecommunications & Media department and the Legal and HR departments of the BIPT.
Axel Desmedt is a Member of the BIPT Council since November 2009. He was designated for a first mandate in which he directed subsequently the Spectrum, Telecommunications & Media, Consumer and Postal departments alongside the Legal and HR departments. In January 2017 he was re-appointed as a Member of the Council.
Axel Desmedt holds a Master’s degree in Law from the Free University of Brussels as well as an LL M from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, USA) where he specialised in international trade law. He worked as an attorney at the Brussels Bar for more than eight years in the international law firms Stibbe and WilmerHale respectively. Axel Desmedt also worked for the Orange Group (formerly France Telecom) as Deputy Director of the Permanent Representation to the EU. Axel Desmedt is also a visiting lecturer on Economic Regulation at the UCL in 2015-2020 and on Electronic Communications Regulation at the KUL since 2020. He was also a co-founder and editor of the Law Review for Network Industries (Kluwer).
Bernardo Herman, Member of the Council
Bernardo Herman is responsible for the Surveillance, NetSec, Postal Market and IT departments.
After obtaining a master’s degree in law (UCL), Bernardo Herman has been holding various legal, regulatory and management positions for over 20 years in the electronic communications and audiovisual sectors in several private and public organisations.
After 5 years with mobile operator KPN-Orange/Base Company, where he intervened in various cases concerning government affairs and competition law, he joined the BIPT for the first time in 2004 as a legal advisor for the Telecom Market & Media Department. From 2006 to 2009, he was in charge of drafting and implementing the regulatory and strategic agenda of the European association ETNO. He then took on management positions for more than 11 years within the Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA), which he headed for five years. There, in 2019, he became Director of European Affairs, in charge of following up the vice-chairmanship of ERGA, the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Medial Services. In that framework, he constantly worked to improve the level playing field for all market players by contributing in particular to regulatory policies relating to the liability of online platforms. He has then been appointed as a Member of the Council and is assuming his duties in September 2021.
Luc Vanfleteren, member of the Council
Luc Vanfleteren is in charge of the the Assignments Department and the Consumer Department.
Luc Vanfleteren is Master in Law (UGent) and Economics (KULeuven) as well as Master in Economics for Competition Law (King’s College London).
He went on to specialise himself in international economics, game theory and industrial organisation (John Hopkins University, University of Chicago, MIT and LSE). He recently followed the advanced management programme at Vlerick. He started his career as a journalist for Trends, after which he became responsible for companies in the information and communications technology as an assistant director at Agoria, the federation of the technological industry. From 1994 to 1999 he was an adviser to Van den Brande. He advised the Minister-President on policy in the fields of research and development, liberalisation of utilities (gas, electricity and telecommunications sectors) and international organisations (EU and OECD). Afterwards he became responsible for strategy and business development at Imec (Interuniversitair Micro-elektronica Centrum). In 1999 he became Director Regulatory Affairs and Interconnection at Telenet. In 2013 Luc Vanfleteren is appointed as a member of the BIPT Council; in January 2017 he was nominated once more as a Member of the Council.