Jakob Gijsbert (Jaap) de Hoop Scheffer was born in Amsterdam on 3 April 1948. After completing his secondary education, he studied law at Leiden University, graduating in 1974. From 1976 to 1986, he was employed in the Foreign Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, serving in Ghana, at the Netherlands Delegation to NATO and as Private Secretary to the Dutch Foreign Minister. He was the Party leader of the CDA between 1997 and 2001; and on 22 July 2002, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. The Netherlands held the Chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 2003. Mr De Hoop Scheffer was the Chairman-in-Office of that organization until he stepped down as Foreign Minister on 3 December 2003. From January 2004 to August 2009 he was Secretary General of NATO and chairman of the North Atlantic Council. He presently lectures in the Hague at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs of his Alma Mater Leiden University as Professor of International Relations and the Practice of Diplomacy. He is the Chair of the Advisory Council on International Affairs for both Government and Parliament, and he is a member of the “Trilateral Commission”, a trustee of the Brussels based “Europe’s World Group”, is a Council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the Board of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. On June 29 2018 he was appointed Minister of State.