Miriam Haritz serves as the EU Water Director for Germany and has been appointed President of the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine by Germany for the period 2023-2025.
Born to a Spanish mother and a father with Eastern European roots, and raised within the border triangle of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, Dr. Miriam Haritz studied law and European Public Affairs at the Universities of Cologne, London (UCL) and Maastricht (UM & EIPA).
She was a fellow of The Dutch Research Council (NWO) as well as the Ius Commune Research School and completed her PhD on the legal liability of states with regard to climate change in Maastricht in 2011. Her academic fields of work focused on international risk regulation in environmental law and consumer protection as well human rights aspects in different policy fields.
From 2010 to 2022, she held several senior positions at the German Federal Office of Civil Protection in Bonn, where she served during six years as Director for Crisis Management. In 2022, she changed to the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection, where she heads the Directorate “Water Management, Water Protection, Soil Conservation”, responsible for fresh water in Germany.