Thierry Baril joined Airbus Commercial Aircraft in 2007 as Executive Vice President, Human Resources, and Member of the Airbus Commercial Aircraft Executive Committee, with responsibility for defining and implementing a company-wide Human Resources strategy, enhancing integration and employee engagement. He oversaw the development of key skills and competences to support business growth and greater internal mobility. One of his main achievements was the transformation of the company in the areas of leadership culture and diversity, having played a key role in the implementation of "Power8" and Airbus' internationalisation strategy.

Prior to this, Thierry Baril was Executive Vice President Human Resources at Eurocopter – now Airbus Helicopters – and member of the Eurocopter Executive Committee from January 2003. In this position, Baril managed the company’s Human Resources activities globally, including the implementation of Human Resources policies across Eurocopter’s European sites and its 15 subsidiaries worldwide. He was instrumental in the implementation of “Vital”, a programme which transformed Eurocopter as a business.

Thierry Baril started his career in 1988 as Deputy Human Resources Director at Boccard SA, and transferred to Laborde & Kupfer-Repelec, a subsidiary of GEC ALSTHOM, as Human Resources Manager in 1991.

From 1995, Thierry Baril held roles as Human Resources Director of the Alstom Energy Belfort site and Vice President of Human Resources of the Alstom Energy Group.

Following on from his experience at Alstom Energy, in 1998 Thierry Baril became Managing Director of Human Resources for Europe for GE (General Electric) at their Belfort Headquarters, followed by Vice President of Human Resources at Alcatel Space’s Headquarters in Toulouse from 2000.

Thierry Baril holds a University Degree in Personnel Management (Diplôme Universitaire de Technologie en Gestion des Entreprises et des Administrations), as well as a Business Page 2 of 2 Degree in Human Resources Management and Development from the Institut de Gestion Sociale (IGS) in Paris.

Dr. Stefan Baron, born in 1978, holds a Master of Arts (M.A.) in Politics and Management (Dipl. Verw.-Wiss) from University of Konstanz and a PhD from Jacobs University Bremen. From 2007 to 2011, he worked as a research associate at the Jacobs Center on Lifelong Learning and Institutional Development in Bremen. He was the head of department for education and labour market politics of the Confederation of Skilled Crafts Baden-Württemberg (Baden-Württembergischer Handwerkstag) in Stuttgart, before he started in his current position as managing director of AgenturQ in October 2017. He’s the author of the book ‘Workplace Learning. Subjective Motives and Supervisor Support Matter’.

Mrs Bieńkowska has been Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs since 2014. Prior to this, she served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure and Development in Poland between 2013 and 2014, and was Minister of Regional Development between 2007 and 2013. Mrs Bieńkowska holds a Master's degree in oriental philology from Jagiellonian University and a Post-graduate diploma from the Polish National School of Public Administration. 

Giovanni Brugnoli is Vice President for Human Capital of the General Confederation of Italian Industry – Confindustria. In 2004 he became Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tiba Tricot Srl (Castellanza, Varese, Italy), a leader company specialized in warp-knitted, 3D and Circular knitting fabrics. Always engaged in entrepreneurial associations, he was President of the Employers’ Association of the Province of Varese from 2001 to 2015 and in 2016 became Vice President of Human Capital in Confindustria. He has been member of the General Council of Confindustria since 2009. Among others, Giovanni Brugnoli is Member of the Board of Directors of the Carlo Cattaneo University - LIUC since 2010 and of the Board of Directors of the Association for LIUC since 2009. He recently became specialist consultant of the CNEL (National Council for Economics and Labour) and President of Unimpiego Confindustria, a company in charge of matching supply and demand of jobs for the Italian labour market.

Professor James Calleja has been involved in vocational education and training since 2001. Before his appointment as Principal and CEO of the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology in June 2018, Mr Calleja was Director of European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) from 2013 to May 2018. Before joining Cedefop, he served as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Employment in his native Malta from 2011 to 2013.

In 2005 he was entrusted with the setting up of the Malta Qualifications Council where he served as Chief Executive up to December 2010. He is an Associate Professor and served as Council member of the University of Malta. Prof Calleja is a graduate of the Universities of Malta, Padua (Italy) and Bradford (UK) from where he obtained his PhD in International Relations. Since 2001, he is an accredited commercial mediator with CEDR (London).

Gian Luigi Cattaneo is Vice President, Human Resources IBM Europe.

With over 20 years of diverse experience in HR Management at worldwide level, he is an expert on HR Strategy, Employee and Labor Relations, Compensation & Benefits, Leadership Development. Currently based in Madrid Spain where IBM EP HQ is located, he has been on assignment twice in US, where, on his last assignment, was responsible of leading the Talent function for the GBS Unit at Global level.

Before he served as HR Director of IBM Italy and he lived two years in Sao Paolo Brazil where he had the responsibility of the IBM Latin America HR team. Gian Luigi holds a Juris Doctor Degree from Milan University.

Maxime Cerutti was appointed Director of BusinessEurope’s Social Affairs department in January 2012. He is responsible for a diverse portfolio of social affairs and labour market policy issues as well as the day-to-day management of the department. He also coordinates BusinessEurope’s engagement as a social partner in the context of the European social dialogue.

Maxime joined BusinessEurope in November 2007 as social affairs adviser. Prior to this, he worked between 2005 and 2007 as a policy officer at the European Youth Forum in Brussels. He started his professional career with a six-month internship at the French ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, where he followed the work of the EU Council on Employment and Social Affairs.

Graduated in European law and political science, Maxime holds a Master degree from Sciences Po Paris, a double law degree from the university of Bordeaux in France and the university of Canterbury in the UK, and he participated in a summer session at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States. His mother tongue is French. He speaks English fluently, is at ease in Italian, and is a basic user of German and Spanish.

Awarded as 'European Cluster Manager of the Year ' in 2016 by the European Commission, being the first woman to win this prize, Bianca is CEO at AVAESEN Cluster, one of Spain's leading cleantech clusters, since 2013.

She launched the first climate-specific start-up accelerator in Spain and expanded it across 12 European countries, in a partnership with EIT Climate-KIC. She is Founder of the first Spanish Think Thank Smart Cities and Leader of ClimateLaunchpad Spain, the Global Green Business Idea Competition, since 2014.

Currently a member of the European High Level Industrial Roundtable ‘Industry 2030’, Bianca assists European Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, Elżbieta Bieńkowska, and European Commission Vice-President for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, Jyrki Katainen, in developing a smart, innovative and sustainable industrial strategy for the future of Europe.

A catalyst for change and an insightful international speaker, she earned two Master’s degrees in International Business and European Integration (University of Valencia, Spain), and Business Communication (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania), having completed several studies in Exponential Thinking and Foresight at Singularity University (California, USA).

Sara leads Google public affairs in Brussels, connecting company public affairs programmes with policy initiatives and debates across the EU. Prior to Google, she worked in various  public affairs and strategic communications leadership roles including at Channel 4 TV and the British Design Council where she worked on sector skills and helped establish new design and innovation programmes for UK  businesses and the public sector. She started her career in politics and was a  spokesperson for the UK Labour Party and a Government Special Adviser in the Prime Minister’s office.

Sophia Eriksson Waterschoot is Director for Youth, Education and Erasmus+ at the European Commission's Directorate General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture. She is in charge of Europe's flagship programme Erasmus+, the newly launched European Solidarity Corps, school, higher education and youth policies. She has previously held various positions within the Commission in the field of strategy and investment in education, employment policy and European structural and investment funds. She studied international economics in Sweden and did an Erasmus student exchange in France. She is an Eisenhower Fellow.

Ms. Gomendio leads the Centre for Skills to support the Secretary-General’s strategic orientations in the area skills with the aim to help countries strengthen employability, social participation and inclusiveness and to build effective and efficient skills systems to make reform happen. She ensures effective collaboration with other areas at the OECD dealing with common issues.

Ms. Gomendio was Secretary of State for Education, Vocational Training and Universities at the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, from January 2012 to May 2015. During this period of time the Spanish Government undertook an education reform.

Previously she enjoyed a productive career in academia. She worked at the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) from 1991, where she became a Research Professor. In 1997 she was appointed Director of the Natural History Museum, and from 2003 until 2004 served as Vice-President for Organisation and Institutional Relations of the CSIC.

Ms. Gomendio, a Spanish national, holds a General Management Program degree from the IESE Business School, a PhD from the University of Cambridge (U.K.), and a BSc in Biology from the Complutense University of Madrid.

Julien Guerrier has been working at the European Commission for more than 20 years, mainly on industrial policy, international trade negotiations and corporate management issues. As a representative of the Commission, he also managed the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation in Tokyo. Currently, he is heading EASME, the Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises of the European Commission, which manages several EU funding Programmes, including COSME for the competitiveness of enterprises and SMEs, Horizon 2020 for Research and Innovation, LIFE for climate action and environment and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund. Before joining the Commission, he was at the French Ministry of Public Works and participated in an exchange of officials with the Japanese administration, where he worked for one year. Julien Guerrier graduated from Ecole Polytechnique and Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées in France and holds an MBA.

Solveigh leads McKinsey’s Center for Government (MCG) as well as McKinsey's work on skills and employment, serving public sector clients on integrated labor-market strategies and structural reforms. As a leader in our Organizational Practice, she supports large-scale institutional capability building and talent and diversity strategies across the private and public sectors worldwide. She is a Young Global Leader (YGL) at the World Economic Forum and serves on the European Commission’s high-level expert panel for the Future of Work. Before joining McKinsey, Solveigh held various positions at the United Nations, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan. She holds a master’s degree in economics, Diplôme de Grande Ecole from ESCP-EAP and a master’s in public administration (MPA) from Columbia University, New York.

John Higgins has been the public face of the digital sector in Europe since November 2011 and speaks regularly on platforms and at conferences throughout Europe and beyond. He was Director General of DIGITALEUROPE, the association for the digital technology industry in Europe, until April 2017, following nine years leading its UK member association, Intellect, now TechUK.

In spring of 2017 he became Chair of the Global Digital Foundation and a Senior Advisor to global communications company, Burson Cohn & Wolfe. He continues to chair DIGITALEUROPE's Brexit Advisory Council and is chair of the University of Warwick's European Advisory Board.

Christian Hoffmann is an executive with circa 20 years of professional experience in multinational companies, governments, educational institutions, NGO, volunteering work for the United Nations, also in collaboration with associations, governments, think tanks, universities and technical schools.

Based in Berlin, Christian is currently Government Affairs Senior Director at Siemens AG and MBA in Strategic & Economic Project Management. Throughout his international career at Siemens, starting as an intern in 2003, he gathered important experiences in project management, consulting, business administration, sales, business intelligence & development, strategy, communications and future scenarios development in several technological fields such as telecom, power sector, oil and gas, mobility and industry.

Strongly engaged in education and skills development, Christian started his career as a teacher and, as project management professional (PMP), he gathered solid expertise in implementing international projects on vocational education and training, as well as designing unique vocational training concepts, tailor-made to customer’s requirements.

Mr. Katainen has been the Vice-President for Jobs Investment and Competitiveness, European Commission since 2014. He started his career as Vice-President of the Youth of the European People’s party and made the decision to follow that way and work for the Finnish Parliament before joining the Finland Parliament and finally the European Commission.

Joost Korte was appointed Director General on the 16 March 2018. Joost Korte was Deputy Director-General of the European Commission’s Trade Department on January 1, 2017. Previously, the Dutch national served as Deputy Director-General in the Agriculture and Rural Development Department as well as in the Enlargement Department. Furthermore, Mr. Korte spent several years in the Commission’s Secretariat General as Director responsible for the relations with the Council of Ministers and gained extensive experience in the Private offices of Sir Leon Brittan, Chris Patten and Danuta Hübner. These professional experiences within the European institutions allowed him to develop a profound understanding of EU decision-making. A lawyer by training, Joost Korte joined the Commission in 1991, following eight years of academic work on European law at the Universities of Utrecht and Edinburgh.

Petri Kuivala is an experienced international leader who currently works as a Chief Information Security Officer of NXP, which is a world-leading provider of security and automotive semiconductor solutions. He has long leadership experience. Prior to NXP, he was member of Microsoft Global Security management team and prior to that worked almost 14 years with different Security leadership positions in Nokia Corporation. During his time at Nokia, he was also expatriated in the People Republic of China. Prior to joining Nokia, Petri worked for the Helsinki Police department and was a founding member of the Helsinki Criminal Police IT investigation department. Currently Petri is also coaching startups (HoxHunt and Laavat) and is a Board of Directors member at Security COM and Privaon.

Claus Lønborg has been managing director for Copenhagen Capacity since 2011. Copenhagen Capacity is the official inward investment agency for the “Greater Copenhagen” metropolitan region. They advise foreign companies and investors on establishing, expanding and retaining their activities in the region. Further to this consultancy role, Copenhagen Capacity is also active in developing the regional attractiveness for foreign investors through a number of projects and activities ranging from cluster development to talent attraction. Prior to his job with Copenhagen Capacity, Claus spent 4½ years in Shanghai, setting up and leading an innovation center to advice Danish companies on research and high tech collaboration with Chinese companies, organisations and universities and to provide general establishment services for knowledge based Danish enterprises. Most of Claus’ career is however from the private sector, where he had held international sales and marketing positions Rockwool, Arla Foods, Maersk and IBM. Through these jobs, Claus has built his international experience from activities and responsibility areas spanning across America, Europa and Asia. Claus holds a masters degree in International marketing and has supplemented his education with training programs from IMD, INSEAD. He is married and has 4 children.

General Manager of the Division Products and services within « le Forem », Public Employment Service for Wallonia, Yves Magnan has developed several experiences regarding Vet-Training and employment policies since 2003. Before 2003, he spent 14 years in the Bank sector, mainly in the transactions and payment system processing.

Mr Markku Markkula has been the President of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) from February 2015 to July 2017 and now the First Vice-President from August 2017. He is Chair of the Board of the Helsinki Regional Council, as well as Chair of the Espoo City Board. Mr Markkula has gained an extensive experience related to change management, innovation, professional development and digitalization. His work experience includes the Advisor to Aalto University Presidents on societal impact as well as research and innovation policy, Director of the Lifelong Learning Institute Dipoli at the Helsinki University of Technology and the Secretary General of the International Association for Continuing Engineering Education IACEE. He is a former member of the Finnish Parliament (1995-2003). From 2000 to 2011 he served as the Chair of the Board of the Finnish Information Society Development Centre TIEKE.

Peter Nielsen holds Master’s and PhD degrees in Engineering and is currently Associate Professor at Department of Materials and Production at Aalborg University in Denmark, where he is employed since 2005. He is head of the research group in Operations Research, coordinator for AAU Defence and coordinator for a Master’s program of Mathematic-Economics with the specialization in Operations Research. He is an expert in decision making under uncertainty, with a special focus on AI for autonomous cyber-physical systems. Here his particular interests are within large scale optimization problems and AI architecture. He has extensive project management experience and is currently running four research projects on AI for autonomous cyber-physical systems. He has published more than 100 research papers, is chief editor for the journal Production & Manufacturing Research published by Taylor & Francis and member of numerous international committees and editorial boards. He is a long running member of the European Defence Skills Partnership Working Group. He has 15 years of university teaching experience and has supervised more than 40 master dissertation projects with industrial collaboration.

Having embarked on his academic career at the University of Liège, Stéphane Pallage earned a Master’s degree in Industrial Administration (Finance) and a Ph.D. in economics from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA. As a professor of the University of Quebec in Montreal, he worked extensively on applied macroeconomics, dynamic general equilibrium models, international aid, and the fight against child labour. He was the Dean of the School of Management at the University of Quebec in Montreal from 2013 to 2017.

Gregor Petri is a Vice President and Analyst in the Research and Advisory team of Gartner. His coverage area includes cloud computing strategies and the use of cloud computing in vertical industries such as Banking and Financial Services. During his tenure at Gartner he held roles such a Vendor Lead Analyst for one of Europe largest CSPs, Agenda Manager for the Cloud-Based Offerings Initiative. At present, Mr. Petri is the Country Research Lead for the Benelux region and coordinates the publication of cross-industry vendor & provider research around digital transformation and cloud adoption. Presenting perspectives on the impact of technological innovations and formulating strategies for cloud, multicloud and multienterprise ecosystem scenario's and helping organizations plan and prepare for this transition are important parts of Mr. Petri's activities.

Dr. Christoph Peylo is Global Head of Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence (BCAI) with locations in Sunnyvale, Bangalore and Renningen. Prior to joining Robert Bosch GmbH in 2017 he was VP at Deutsche Telekom Laboratories in Berlin, where he worked in the area of AI,(Cyber-) Security, Industrie 4.0, and IoT. Before joining Deutsche Telekom in 2006 he worked in various positions from software engineer to managing director of a software company. Christoph Peylo has studied Computer Science, Computational Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence and acquired his Ph.D. at the University of Osnabrück in the field of AI.

Laura Piovesan works at the European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU’s long-term financing institution headquartered in Luxembourg. She is currently Director of the Bank’s Innovation and Competitiveness Department within EIB’s Projects Directorate that is responsible for the due diligences of investments in R&D- intensive sectors, including the engineering, automotive, chemical, pharmaceutical and telecoms industries, education, health and digital infrastructures.

Laura is a graduate in Chemical Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy. Prior to joining the EIB she worked for eight years for an Italian engineering company, first as Research Scientist and then as Industrial Economist.

Director of Corporate Affairs for Europe, Middle East and Africa since 2012, Piotr has coordinated the Cisco Corporate Social Responsibility Programs in the region. Cisco CSR includes pillars such as Governance and Ethics, Supply Chain, Social and Environmental corporate impact, Education, Economy Development and Sustainability. He is also a board member of the e-Skills Association an NGO co-founded by Cisco to promote ICT Education and fight youth unemployment.

Previous to that, Piotr led the Cisco’s Public Sector Business Development Practice in Central Europe, Emerging Markets, EMEA and Global Public Sector from 2008 to 2012. Between 2005 and 2008 he led Cisco’s Sales Organization and close cooperation with Cisco’s customers, partners and the governments of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia as Cisco General Manager in the Baltic States region.

In his early years in Cisco he was a member of the CEE Management Team, where he contributed to building the leadership team and designing and implementing the organization’s investment model.

Before working at Cisco, Piotr built his experience in different leadership roles in companies such as Ford Motor Company, Coca-Cola and Eli Lilly.

As an educational background, Piotr holds a medical degree and is also a Harvard University Alumni, having concluded the Innovation for Economic Development program, as well as Stanford University’s Executive Program.

Laurent is a Partner at PwC and leads the Skills development, Digital transformation and Innovation activities at PwC Luxembourg. He is the founder and partner of the PwC’ Accelerator network, the first international professional firm network to support Tech SMEs in their internationalisation strategy, by providing access to clients, partners, skills and finance support in Europe, Middle east, Asia and America. After having developed a research centre in Investment management, he specialised over the last 15 years in economic development initiatives for governments, regions and high growth companies. Laurent initiated and developed international partnerships in life sciences, agriculture and information technology raising more than USD 200 million as of August 2010. Currently, he advises the EU Commission  and international governments on the strategies to accelerate the uptake of digital transformation.He specifically  focuses on the human and skills dimensions of these strategies with two major projects: the EU 2030 High-tech Skills Vision and strategy for the EU Manufacturing industry; the Luxembourgish Government for the development and implementation of national upskilling solution (www.skillsbridge.lu). Laurent also led the work being done by the ‘Strategic Policy Forum on Digital Entrepreneurship’ for the development of policy papers including the one on upskilling the workforce that paved the road for the launch of Blueprint for Sectoral Cooperation on Skills. Laurent also lead a number of other projects related to innovation ecosystem, such as EU Business Innovation Observatory. Furthermore, he created two coding schools to upskill in three months (500 hours) unemployed people and place them in a new sustainable job as web developper. Additionally, he has been appointed as advisor of the UNDP for the development of Global Knowledge Index and has recently produced the Future of Knowledge report for UNDP and MBRF (www.knowledge4all.org).

Antonio Ranieri, Head of Department for Learning and Employability at Cedefop, manages a team of European experts working in VET policy analysis and research. The mission of the Department is to support the development and implementation of VET policies aimed at increasing attractiveness, effectiveness and inclusiveness of vocational education and training in EU Member States.

An economist by training, Antonio has taught regional economics at the University of Rome since 2002. As Head of Area at CLES in Rome, an independent centre of studies on labour market and economic development issues, he coordinated research projects in design, monitoring and evaluation of public investment and policy.

Yvan Rooseleer is a senior lecturer and program coordinator at Odisee University College Brussels with a particular focus on Internet technology, cybersecurity, digital business and entrepreneurship. In 2013, Yvan co-founded the Belgian IT Academy Support Center (BiASC) and was appointed Managing Director. BiASC supports about 100 institutions of higher education and vocational training centers and monitors important trends and developments for ICT educators. As an instructor trainer in information technology and cybersecurity, Yvan has learned to understand the needs of ICT educators, their institutions and students. Originally, Yvan studied linguistics with artificial intelligence at KULeuven and then completed his formal education with information systems management at the VUB in Brussels.

In 1979, he started his political and diplomatic career as an attaché in the Prime Minister's office in Luxembourg, followed by the Foreign Ministry. From 1989 to 1990, he was Secretary to the LSAP parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies. From 1991 to 2004, he was a member of the Council of State.

He has been a member of the government since 2004. Nicolas Schmit joined the government as Minister Delegate for Foreign Affairs and Immigration on 31 July 2004. He was then appointed Minister of Labour, Employment and Immigration on July 2009. Following the legislative elections of 20 October 2013, Nicolas Schmit was appointed Minister of Labour, Employment and the Social and Solidarity Economy on 4 December 2013 until December 2018.

Professor Rolf Tarrach was rector of the trilingual University of Luxembourg since 2005 – a position that he held for ten years. He was born in 1948 in Valencia, Spain, studied Physics at the University of Valencia and obtained his PhD from the University of Barcelona. He subsequently served as a postdoctoral researcher at CERN, Geneva, and was a professor of theoretical physics at the Universities of Valencia and Barcelona.

Rolf Tarrach has published more than 100 papers in theoretical high energy physics, quantum field theory, and quantum mechanics and has written two books on quantum information theory. He has been honoured with a honoris causa degree from the University of Saint Petersburg Russia, and he is the recipient of eight official prizes. He was Dean of the School of Physics and Vice-Rector of the University of Barcelona.

Rolf Tarrach is the former president of CSIC Madrid (the Spanish Scientific Research Council) and a former member of the European Union Research Advisory Board, of the European Heads of Research Council group which he also chaired and of the 5-year assessment panel of experts of the European Commission.

He is a former member of the Board of Telefonica of Catalonia and has been a coorganiser of the first three Euroscience Open Forum meetings in Stockholm (2004), Munich (2006) and Barcelona (2008). In 2008 he became the President of the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA) and was the Vice-chair of the jury of the French “Initiative d’excellence” in 2011-12, which he is again (2015-2017). Professor Tarrach continues to be a professor of Physics at the University of Luxembourg. He has been a Council Member of the European University Association (EUA) for ten years.

Since July 2015, Ludovic Voet has been national youth leader of the Belgian CSC union. As President of Young CSC, he is responsible for the development of young people’s action within the union organisations (federations and local unions), external representation, organising, affiliation and lobbying. His trade union activity started as a student at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). From 2006 to 2011 he was active in the Federation of Francophone Students (FEF), helping to mobilise other students to take collective action. He took part in the campaigns that led to a reduction in higher education costs in the French part of Belgium in 2010. He also supported the student campaign against the French government’s proposed law to enable employers to fire young workers – a proposal which was subsequently withdrawn. In 2011, completing his studies, Ludovic participated in the major trade union demonstration in opposition to Belgian government austerity policies, and resolved to make a career in defending workers’ rights. In December 2012 he was appointed as local youth leader for the CSC Mons-La Louvière area.