Dirk Van den Steen is an economist working at the European Commission’s Directorate General For Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE) as Head of the unit C3 State of Health -covering the performance of national health systems as well as the development and monitoring of EU policy and law in the area of tobacco control. At the European Commission in the past Dirk has been involved in the development of the Cross-border Healthcare Directive, notably working on the mutual recognition of cross-border prescriptions as well as the assessment of national health systems. In the area of medical products at the European Commission Dirk also worked at the European Commission DG for Competition on antitrust enforcement in the domain of pharmaceuticals, devices and health services. In the first half of 2024 Dirk was part of the Commission team supporting Professor Mario Draghi on the EU Competitiveness report.