About me

My name is Michiel van Hulten. I am managing director of Place Lux bvba/sprl, a boutique EU affairs consultancy specialising in ideas, events and communications (read more about what I do here).

From 2007 to 2010 I was a managing director in the Brussels office of global strategic communications firm Burson-Marsteller, where I specialised in the online economy.

From 2005 to 2007 I was Chair of the Dutch Labour Party (PvdA) and from 1999 to 2004 I served as a Member of the European Parliament for the PvdA, where I was my party’s spokesman on budgetary control, internal market, agriculture and fisheries issues. I also co-founded the cross-party Campaign for Parliament Reform, which fought successfully to make Europe’s Parliament more accountable to its citizens (although much remains to be done!)

Before becoming an MEP I worked as a policy officer with the Netherlands Trades Union Confederation, where I was responsible for membership development; as private secretary to the Dutch education and science minister, with whom I developed the first pan-European social democratic approach to research policy; and as an administrator with the EU Council of Ministers, where I worked first on intellectual property issues and then on the accession negotiations with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

I grew up in the Netherlands, Mali, Burkina Faso, the USA and the UK. I am a graduate of the United World College of the Atlantic in Wales, where I took the International Baccalaureate, and of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where I studied Government. I hold postgraduate degrees from the LSE (in Public Administration and Public Policy) and the College of Europe in Bruges (in European Political and Administrative Studies).

I was a founding Member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and am a former Vice-Chair of Policy Network, the international progressive think-tank.

I speak Dutch, English and French fluently, as well as some German.

My colleague at Place Lux is Joan Manuel Lanfranco Pari.