Since 1988, Jean-Claude Piris has served as the Legal Counsel of the Council of the EU and Director General of its Legal Service. He is an Honorary Counsellor of State of France, a former diplomat to the UN and the former Director of Legal Affairs of the OECD. He was the Legal Advisor of the successive Inter-Governmental Conferences which negotiated and adopted the treaties of Maastricht in 1992, Amsterdam in 1997, Nice in 2001, the Constitutional Treaty signed in Rome in 2004 and, finally, the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007.