Noëlle Lenoir

Noelle Lenoir
Minister Delegate for European Affairs
In office June 17, 2002 – March 31, 2004
Preceded by	Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres
Succeeded by	Claudie Haigneré
Member of the Constitutional Council of France
In office March 11, 1992 – March 12, 2001
Preceded by	Francis Mollet-Vieville
Succeeded by	Pierre Joxe
Personal details
Born	Noelle Lenoir (1948-04-27) April 27, 1948
Nationality	France

Noëlle Lenoir (born 27 April 1948 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine) is a French stateswoman.

Career

Noelle Lenoir graduated from the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris and the Paris Law School and has been a professor in each of these institutions. After qualifying as a lawyer and the achievement of the Senate administrator competition, she has been appointed, from 1972 to 1982, at the law Committee of the French Senate where she was in charge of the follow-up and review of criminal law, immigration law, human rights law in addition to the Justice budget. Following 10 years at the High Assembly, Noelle Lenoir joined the regulation management of the newly formed National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties (Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) as Chef Legal Officer, from 1982 until 1984. She has followed the implementation of the French Data processing and Liberty law and she particularly focused on Marketing, Health Data and the applicability of the law in the Scientifics and Statistics domains as well as on transfers of data.

In 1984, she joined the Council of State (the Conseil d’état is the French administrative supreme court where she was appointed 'Rapporteur Public" (Advocate general). In 1988, she was appointed as Chief of Staff of the Ministry of Justice, where she served until 1990. In 1990, the French government appointed Lenoir to review French bioethics law. Her report to the Prime Minister, Michel Rocard, titled “Aux Frontières de la Vie: Pour une éthique biomedicale à la Française” provided the foundation and adoption of French bioethics law.

She was appointed as the first woman and youngest person on the Conseil Constitutionnel, (the French Supreme Court for constitutional matters), where she served the Court's nine-year term from 1992 to 2001.^[1]

Besides being a constitutional Justice, Noelle Lenoir chaired the International Committee on Bioethics of UNESCO and drafted the Human Genome and Human Rights Declaration, which the United Nations endorsed in 1998 on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 1991, she is also appointed by the European Commission presided by Jacques Delors as a member of the European Ethics and Science & Technology Group (GEE). Then, in 1994, she is elected as President of this group and reelected twice, by its members.

She left her position at the GEE in 2000 to travel to the USA where she was, as visiting professor, a law teacher for several months at the Law university of Columbia, New York City before joining the Paris Bar in 2001, Noelle Lenoir is named in 2002 Minister for European Affairs by Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin.^[2] During this period she was involved into a number of negotiations with central and oriental European countries on their way to join the European Union and the follow-up of the constitutional treaty. In addition, she defends France's positions on various European proposals and legislations. Finally, she is the first woman appointed, with her homologue the German minister of European affairs, the position of «General Secretary for France-German Cooperation (SGFA)».

Noëlle Lenoir joined the Parisian office of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP as an Of-Counsel in 2004. In 2006-2007 she was appointed by the French Minister of Justice to carry out an evaluation of the status of the European Company (SE) (report delivered on 19 March 2007).

Noelle Lenoir joined JeantetAssociés in 2009 as a partner where she headed the European department (competition law, litigation and regulatory).

In January 2012, she joined the Paris office of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP as a partner where she heads the department on Competition, Regulatory, Public affairs law at the national level and at the European level. She also specializes in data protection law and cyber security covering a wide scope of areas in this respect such as data breach prevention and incident response, government and internal investigations, cross-border data transfer and e-discover, controllers' and processors' liability, global compliance and risk management, privacy policies and EU data counseling, consumer protection and class action litigation defense as well as advertising and internet marketing. She also advises on confidential business information and misappropriation of trade secrets as well as on matters in relation with he blocking statute.^[3]

Current educational activities / Think tank

Lenoir used to teach at Sciences-Po Paris and the Faculty of law of Paris (apart from Columbian Law School and UCL). She is currently an Associate Professor and President of the European Institute at the Hautes Etudes de Commerce in Paris.^[1]

In addition, she is the Founder and President of “Cercle des Européens”,^[1] Think Tank which operates as ideas exchange group on socioeconomic and political stakes of the 21st century Europe and which is deemed as a place where French decision-makers can meet European decision makers for roundtables on different European problems and subjects. She is also a member of the EC High Level Experts group on the European company law at the Commission level.

Mandates

Noëlle Lenoir was administrator of Generali France (2008-2012). She is currently administrator of Valeo (since 2009) and Compagnie des Alpes (since 2012)

Local representative of the City of Valmandois (Val d’Oise) for the first time in 1977, Lenoir was elected mayor of this town in 1989 until 1995,^[1] a mandate she had to abandon in favor of her mandate as a justice on the French Constitutional Court. She stood again for the mayor election in 2008^[1] and was elected with her complete list. Lenoir stayed Mayor of Valmondois from 2008 through 2010, where she resigned for personal reasons. In this capacity she was vice-president of the community of cities of the District of "Sausseron", member of the steering Committee of the Association of France Mayors, as well as member of the legal committee of “Concessions – Délégations de service public” of the Delegate Management Institute. She is member of the Board of the Association of French Constitutional lawyers and of the Society for Comparative Law.

She was appointed by the Bureau of the French National Assembly as Chief Ethics Officer (2012 - 2014)

Press / Media

Mrs Lenoir is a columnist on European matters for a variety of French newspapers. She was editor for the BFM radio station, France-Culture radio,France 24 TV station in partnership with HEC, and she is responsible for the “Europe” blog of the L’Express weekly magazine. She has made several publications about the caricaturist Honoré Daumier. She is honorary President of the Society for the Friends of Daumier which she created in 1994.

Among others:

- La Transparence administrative (en coll., 1987) with Bruno Lasserre and Bernard Stirn)

- Aux Frontières de la Vie : une Ethique Biomédicale à la Française.

- Les Normes Internationales de la Bioéthique (1998)

- Relever le défi des Biogechnologies (2000)

- La Justice, de Daumier à nos jours (1999)

- La Vie Politique, de Daumier à nos jours (2005)

- La Societas Europaea ou SE : Pour une Citoyenneté Européenne de l'Entreprise (2007)

Distinctions

- Grand Officier de l'Ordre national du Mérite (France)

- Officier de la Légion d'Honneur (France)

- Grand Officier de l'Ordre de Léopold II (Belgique)

- Commandeur de l'Ordre du Mérite (Pologne)

- Commandeur de l'Ordre du Mérite de la République fédérale d'Allemagne (Allemagne)

Other Distinctions:

- Honoris Causa, Suffolk University (USA);

- University College London (UK)

- Distinguished Fellow of the Hastings Center (États-Unis)

- Member of the American Law Institute

Teaching

Competition law and European Law at Pantheon Sorbonne Paris I

Areas of practice

- Competition Law at National and European level

- Public Business Law and Constitutional Law

- Data Protection, Privacy and Cybersecurity

- Litigation

- Regulatory

References

External links

• Le Cercle des Européens
• Report on the European Company statute (SE)commissioned by the French Minister of Justice
• Noëlle Lenoir's opinion editorial commentaries for Project Syndicate