Peter Baur is the Deputy Head of the unit LifeLong Learning, Higher Education and International Affairs at the European Commission  Directorate-General for Education and Culture. He has been working on the development of policy in the area of higher education on EU level, with a particular focus on the development of university-industry co-operation. Before joining the European Commission, he worked for 10 years as project manager in the IT industry. He joined the European Commission in 1994 and he worked for almost 7 years in the European research programmes in the area of information technologies. In 2001 he started to work in the Directorate General Education and Culture. He was closely involved in the elaboration of the Commission's proposal for the integrated lifelong learning programme and in the activities related to the Education and Training 2010 work programme. He worked during a number of years on the development of vocational training policy on EU level and was responsible for the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) in Thessaloniki, Greece.