Xavier Gillard

Manage the full policy and regulatory portfolio of a European trade association representing the carbon and graphite industry, with a high degree of autonomy in a team of four. Report to the Secretary General. Interact regularly with C-suite executives of member companies.

Committee management and consensus building

• Convene and run two technical committees: energy storage (batteries, hydrogen, mobility) and specialty products (aerospace, defence). Bring together companies with divergent commercial interests and build consensus on shared positions.

Policy monitoring, analysis, and advocacy

• Monitor and analyse EU policy developments across trade defence (anti-dumping, circumvention), customs classification, Batteries Regulation, Eco-design, sustainability reporting (CSRD, CS3D), Critical Raw Materials Act, Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act, Innovation Fund, and state aid (block exemptions).
• Translate regulatory developments into strategic guidance for members. Draft position papers and consultation responses on a weekly basis.
• Lead advocacy campaigns at Commission and Parliament levels. Participate in Commission expert groups and public consultations. Coordinate positions through the value chain and other associations.

Trade defence

• Organise meetings with trade defence lawyers, contribute to defining the scope and schedule of investigations, provide market data in support of legal arguments, and monitor budget implications for members.

Data analysis and tooling

• Analyse Eurostat trade flow data as well as proprietary data from consultancies, production and capacity figures, and pricing trends to support policy positions and trade defence proceedings.

Member advisory and business development

• Advise members on EU funding eligibility (Innovation Fund, state aid) and their applications' framing.
• Discuss material science issues with engineers, translating their technical input into policy language. Visit production sites, interview plant managers on current and forecast capacities.
• Canvass prospective members at industry conferences. Represent the association as a speaker.

Part-time position supporting doctoral research. Four courses per year, up to 150 students per semester.

• Designed and taught seminars in international political economy (WTO negotiation simulations, policy brief writing, case-study analysis), international relations (post-Cold War conflicts, Uyghur repression in China: critical source analysis, document synthesis, bibliographic research).
• Taught a first-year course in formal logic and function analysis (propositional logic, set theory, calculus).
• Responsible for course design, grading of intermediary and final assignments, weekly office hours (2h per course), virtual university administration, and classroom logistics.

• Authored an internal memo analysing the compatibility of proposed US amendments to the WTO Anti-Subsidy Agreement with European Investment Bank statutes. Concluded that the amendments would undermine EU capacity to finance decarbonisation policy.
• Contributed to an internal consultation exercise on the organisation and HR management of the DG. Synthesised all contributions, and authored a 15-page summary report for the Director of Cabinet, who rated it Excellent.

Wrote the daily economic briefing for the Consul, with a focus on the Chinese steel sector and the shipping/aviation industry in the context of Luxembourg's airport development strategy.

Monitored EU digital policy (data protection, copyright, surveillance). Drafted the organisation's newsletter, summarised parliamentary debates, and engaged with MEPs. During the same year, ran a personal policy blog ("Politique du Netz"), translating articles from German (Netzpolitik.org), and authored a crowdfunded policy booklet on copyright reform (18 proposals, €3,000 raised), printed and distributed to French MPs and MEPs.

L'invention d'une défense commerciale européenne: genèse, procéduralisation et dépolitisation de l'instrument antidumping.
Archival research of the Commission's history (1960s–80s), construction of a database tracking trade defence lawyers' jurisprudential trajectories, 43 semi-structured interviews with Commission officials, lobbyists, and lawyers. Five-month internship at DG Competition. Published in peer-reviewed journals.

International relations, finalité Monde. Second year at Tongji University, Shanghai (China-EU relations, political economy of the Arctic). Master thesis: International straits disputes in the Arctic and China's position, combining international law analysis and interviews with Chinese and European scholars and policy-makers.

First year at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich (epistemology of mathematics, decision theory). Master thesis on the epistemology of testimony and trust, mobilising game theory (prisoner's dilemma, cooperation strategies, reputational mechanisms). Formal logic (propositional, predicate, modal), political philosophy (Hobbes, Rousseau, Hegel), philosophy of science.

Quantitative methods (statistics, factorial analysis), qualitative methods (fieldwork, interviews), political sociology, demography, European social affairs.