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: 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. In January 2024, he was reappointed as Chairman of the BIPT Council.
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. In January 2024, he was reappointed as Member of the BIPT Council.
Peggy Valcke, member of the Council
Peggy Valcke is a Doctor of Law (KU Leuven, 2003) and also earned a Competition Law Postgraduate Diploma at King’s College (2006).
Since 1996 she is attached to the CiTiP (Centre for IT & IP Law, formerly ICRI and CIR) of the Leuven Faculty of Law and Criminology, a prominent academic research group of about 100 collaborators, where she is a member of the Board of Directors. As a research professor at KU Leuven she has introduced research lines in the following areas: regulation of communications and media platforms, cybersecurity and cybercrime, privacy and data protection, autonomous and intelligent systems (artificial intelligence), regulation of data markets and data management. In iMinds, later called imec, and various European research projects she closely collaborated with colleagues from engineering, economic and sociological sciences. Apart from telecommunications and media law she has also taught courses in the broader ICT law. In 2020 she joined the board of the Leuven Faculty of Law, as vice dean for research, and became an executive committee member of the KU Leuven Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Leuven.AI). In the previous years, Peggy also took up positions as a visiting and part-time professor at the University of Tilburg, the European University Institute (Florence), the Bocconi University (Milan) and the Central European University (in Budapest at the time).
Peggy combines her academic experience with managerial experience – as a media expert at the private Office of the Flemish Minister of Media (2005-2008) and as a personal advisor to Věra Jourová, Vice-President of the European Commission (2022-2023) – and with experience as a supervisor, notably as an assessor of the Belgian Competition Authority (2008-2022) and as a member of the General Chamber of the Flemish Media Regulator (2008-2023). Since 2019 she represents Belgium in the Council of Europe during the preparation of and negotiations about an Artificial Intelligence Treaty. Until recently she also was co-director of the Flemish Knowledge Centre Data & Society.
Stefaan Vyverman, member of the Council
Stefaan Vyverman is in charge of the Telecom Market & Media Department and the Assignments Department. He is also responsible for the internal department Logistics & Purchases.
Stefaan Vyverman holds master degrees in Business Economics and Communication Studies (UGent).
From 1993 to 1997, he worked at the Cabinet of the Flemish Prime Minister Luc Van Den Brande, where he advised on media & telecommunications policy and general economic affairs. He then built up an extensive telecoms expertise within Proximus’s Wholesale Department. Stefaan has been working as a telecom consultant since 2015. In that capacity, he has directed a wide range of projects in the telecom sector in the areas of strategy, procurement, wholesale & B2B and market localization for both fixed and mobile technologies. Since 2019, Stefaan was also the head of 5G launch Benelux at Capgemini Invent.