EUMETSAT Council Appoints Philip Evans as next Director-General

Darmstadt, Germany, July 2, 2020 – The Council of Europe’s operational satellite agency for weather and climate, EUMETSAT, has appointed Philip Evans as the organisation’s next Director-General for a five-year term, starting on January 1, 2021. Evans will take over the reins of the 30-Member-State organisation from Alain Ratier, who will retire at the end of 2020 after serving nine-and-a-half years as Director-General.

Evans achieved a highly successful career at the UK Met Office, where he held strategic and operational senior management positions and served as member of the Executive Board, after leading the remote sensing instrumentation group in the 1990s.

In his last position at the Met Office, Chief Operating Officer, Evans was responsible for the full operational delivery and infrastructure of the organisation, leading a team of 700 people. He also represented the United Kingdom on the EUMETSAT Council over the past two years.

Most recently, he has been the Director of Physics Programmes at the UK Institute of Physics, where his responsibilities have included diversity in physics, innovation and education programmes.

“I have admired EUMETSAT and the work that it carries out for many years and it is a great privilege to be selected as the next Director-General,” Evans said. “I'm looking forward to working with everyone in the organisation to help continue EUMETSAT’s long track record of excellence and further enhance the support we provide to our stakeholders and users in addressing some of societies’ biggest challenges."

Ratier said he is honoured and delighted to hand over the leadership of EUMETSAT to Phil Evans.

“He will bring his extensive experience of strategic and operational management and new energy, which I am sure will be decisive for EUMETSAT in the challenging years to come,” Ratier said.

The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites is an intergovernmental organisation based in Darmstadt, Germany, currently with 30 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom).

EUMETSAT operates the geostationary satellites Meteosat -9, -10 and -11 over Europe and Africa, and Meteosat-8 over the Indian Ocean.