Thomas Jakl is the former chair of the European Chemicals Agency's (European Chemicals Agency, ECHA) Management board and is Deputy Director General of the Austrian Environment Ministry responsible for Chemicals Policy. His field of activity includes legislation on chemical substances at the national, European and UN levels. He served as ECHA's president from 2008 until September 2012. He is president of the Governing Board of PARC - the "Partnership for Risk Assessment for Chemicals" a 400 Million Euro initiative of the EU's research program "Horizon Europe".