Born on the 15th June 1949, Pierre Vimont is a French Ambassador and law graduate of the Institute of Political Studies, “L’Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Paris” and the National School of Administration (ENA). He has been the Executive Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS) since 2010. He is also a chevalier of France’s National Order of Merit.
After graduating in 1977, he became Second (1977-78) and then First Secretary (1978-81) to the French Ambassador in London. From 1981-85, he was spokesperson for Press and Information Service in Paris, before researching security problems at the East-West Institute in New York from 1985-86. He then returned to Europe to serve as Second Councilor for the Permanent Representation of France in Brussels, where he stayed until 1990. He was then Chief of Staff of the Minister Delegate for European affairs at the French Foreign Ministry until 1993, when he became the Director for Scientific and Technical Cooperation, Department for Cultural, Scientific and Technical Relations (1993-96) and the Deputy Director General for Cultural, Scientific and Technical Relations (1996-97). He then held the position of Director for European Cooperation for two years before becoming Ambassador, Permanent Representative of France to the European Union in 1999. After three years as Ambassador in Brussels, Vimont then returned to Paris where he stayed until 2007 as the Chief of Staff for three ministers of Foreign affairs. It was after this that he was appointed by President Nicolas Sarkozy as Ambassador of France to the United States of America, and so moved to Washington until 2010. On October 25th, 2010, he was appointed his current position of Executive Secretary General of the European External Action Service, stepping down in March 2015.
In June 2015, he was appointed Personal Envoy of the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, to lead preparations for the Valletta Conference between EU and African countries. In 2016, he served as France’s Middle East envoy for the Paris peace conference. In 2019, Pierre was appointed as French President Emmanuel Macron’s Special Envoy for the architecture of security and trust with Russia.
Vimont is a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe.
