Mrs Paraskevi (Evi) PAPANTONIOU

Director for Space (acting) in the European Commission - Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DEFIS)

Mrs Evi PAPANTONIOU is Director for Space (acting) in the European Commission - Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space (DEFIS). Ms Papantoniou is in charge of EU Space Policy and EU space flagships, Copernicus and Galileo /EGNOS. She is responsible in particular for actions supporting the EU aerospace ecosystem, as well as for relations with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the EU Space Programme Agency (EUSPA).

Until December 2019, she was the Head of Unit in the Directorate-General for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) responsible for legal and inter-institutional aspects of Galileo/EGNOS, the EU satellite navigation programme. Previously, she contributed in setting-up the EU Defence Fund and dealt with the shaping of EU response on countering hybrid threats.

Ms Papantoniou has also worked in the European Commission Task Force for Greece. In that capacity, she supported Greece’s structural reform efforts under the economic adjustment programme in the area of business environment and justice reform. 

As competition lawyer by training, she worked for several years in DG Competition of the European Commission on competition enforcement in anti-trust, but also state aid control.

Before joining the European Commission, she worked in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and as a competition lawyer in Paris.

She holds a Master of Laws (LLM) in EU law from the College of Europe in Bruges.