Boasting 25 years of experience serving in different public and private organisations, Philippe Clerc is widely recognised as one of the strongest legal professionals in the French aviation sector. Having served at the helm of the legal department of the French space agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, for a decade, Clerc has gained a reputation for running large-scale organisational projects. Last year for instance, he received wide praise for completing an internal project aiming to modernise the legal department.

The project involved in the design and implementation of four innovative management procedures and the setup of a new unit specialised in designing a new legal instrument supporting innovative space projects on behalf of stakeholders, the industry and law-makers. In addition, Clerc was recently instrumental on another internal project to create a new compliance and ethics department, which he himself took charge of in 2018.

Other highlights in Clerc’s career include participating in the privatisation process of the Arianespace company – the world leader in space launch services – by CNES to Airbus and Safran (now ArianeGroup), and writing the first book on French space law.