Supervisory Board

Dr. Janez Kopač heads the Energy Community Secretariat as Director from December 2012 till December 2021. DiXi Group has been working in close cooperation with the Secretariat during this period on the issues related to the implementation of the EU legislation in Ukraine.

Before taking up this post, Dr. Kopač was Slovenia’s Director General for Energy in the Ministry of Economy (2008-2012), where he was responsible for the implementation of the Third Energy Package and other energy acquis. He served as Minister of Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy (2000-2004) and Minister of Finance (1992), in addition to a ten-year career as Chairman of Budget Committee in the Slovenian Parliament.

Born in 1961, Slovenian citizen Dr. Janez Kopač holds a Master’s Degree in Economic Science from the University of Ljubljana. Also, Dr. Kopač has obtained his Ph.D. in 2021.

Professor of Law at the City Law School, City University, London. Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Centre. Senior Researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. Senior Fellow at the Institute for Statecraft, London, and a regular columnist with the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Financial Times. One of his publications , prepared with the experts of DiXi Group, covers the issue of Nord Stream 2.

Director of the Energy center at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales in Paris (IRFI). Prior to joining IFRI, he spent six years at the International Energy Agency (IEA), notably as Russia & Sub-Saharan Africa Programme Manager where he conducted oil and gas market analyses and was responsible for institutional relations with these countries and regions. He also held various other positions, such as at the Robert Schuman Foundation, where he was in charge of a Ukraine observatory.

Research Director at the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security; Senior Associate and Head of the International Energy Security Program at the Centre for European Security Strategies; Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council Energy and Environment Program.

German Advisory Group. Georg Zachmann’s work at Bruegel focuses on energy and climate change issues at the European Think Tank Bruegel. Georg has worked on the EU Emissions Trading System, dealing with the issues related to the European electricity market and European renewables policy.

He has worked as a Senior Associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. In 2000 he left the US State Department where he had been primarily engaged in European issues. Since 2000, Smith has been consulting several energy companies and delivering lectures on Russian-European energy issues.