New Director of Translation at EU Directorate-General for Translation

On December 9, 2015, the European Commission announced that Klaus Meyer-Koeken had been promoted to Director of Translation for the Directorate-General for Translation. Meyer-Koeken was formerly the Head of the English Language Department operating under Directorate D of the Directorate-General for Translation. The German language department, English language department, French language department, and terminology coordination unit fall under Directorate D. Meyer-Koeken now reports to the Deputy Director-General responsible for Directorates A, B, C and D, which in turn reports to the Director-General.

As Director of Translation, Meyer-Koeken is responsible for strategic development matters related to the activities of the Directorate-General for Translation. These include translation, policy strategy and coordination, and management. The Directorate-General for Translation is the European Commission’s in-house translation and localization service. It translates all of EU’s 24 official languages, and handles the largest workload among the individual translation services of each branch of the EU.

In 2014, the Directorate-General for Translation processed 2.3 million pages for an estimated EUR 330 million (USD 358 million) a year. Among the 2.3 million pages processed, 71% were done in-house with the remaining portion done by contractors.

Meyer-Koeken, a German national, first joined the Directorate-General for Translation as a translator in 1991. He later became Head of the English Language Department in 2007. The appointment of Meyer-Koeken as Director of Translation was announced alongside two other appointments to Deputy Director-General for other areas of the European Commission.