The European Commission is to appoint a new director-general in its health and food safety department from next month.

Anne Bucher, a French national, has worked for the Commission for 35 years across several departments and will head the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE) beginning Oct. 1.The DG SANTE is a department of the Commission. It is responsible for EU policy on food safety and public health and monitoring implementation of related laws.

Vytenis Andriukaitis is European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety and Jean-Claude Juncker is head of the European Commission until European Parliament elections next year.Bucher is currently chair of the commission’s Regulatory Scrutiny Board and will succeed Xavier Prats Monné who will retire at the end of September to work with non-profit organizations in the education sector. He became the head of DG SANTE in September 2015.

Bucher has been a senior manager in the Commission’s Directorates-General for Economic Affairs and for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, respectively, since 2008.Her career has focused on policy areas including economy and finance, development and social policy, taxation and information society.

Bucher will bring a broad view of European Commission policies in a variety of areas, to help with situations when health and food safety management is interlinked with economy and technology.The European Commission also proposed to the administrative board of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to extend the term of its current executive director, Bernhard Url, for five years as of June 2019. Url has been managing EFSA since 2013, following a role at the Austrian food safety authorities.