Pierre Chevalier (Belgian politician)

Pierre Antoine Marie Chevalier (born October 8, 1952 in Bruges) is a Belgian politician and member of the VLD. He is a former Secretary of State in the Belgian Federal Government and was elected to the Belgian Senate in 2003 by the Dutch electoral college. He is also a freemason.^{[citation needed]} He studied Laws and Criminology at the University of Ghent before he became a lawyer. He became involved in politics early on, first as a Trotskyist, as a socialist later on, and since 1992 as a liberal. In October 2000, he was forced to resign as Secretary of State by Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, who is also a member of the VLD, after it became public that he had been named in a criminal investigation in Switzerland.

[edit] Political career

1985-2003: Member of the Chamber of Representatives
1988-1989: Secretary of State for Education
1989-1990: Secretary of State for Science Policy
1990-1992: Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Assembly of the WEU
1999-2000: Secretary of State for Foreign Trade
since 2003: Directly-elected Senator for the Dutch electoral college
presently Pierre Chevalier is also a special envoy for the OSCE