Françoise Tulkens

Françoise Tulkens (born 12 September 1942) is a Belgian lawyer and expert in criminal and penal law, and Vice-President of the European Court of Human Rights. She has been a member of the Court since 1998, Section President since 2007 and Vice-President since February 2011.

Tulkens was born in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. She studied Law, earning a doctorate in 1965 and practising at the Bar until 1968, when she was appointed Research Fellow with the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique). She was awarded the agrégation (higher education teaching qualification) in 1976 and the same year took up a post as Professor of Law in the Université catholique de Louvain (French-speaking Catholic University of Louvain at Louvain-la-Neuve), where she remained until her appointment as a permanent judge at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Alongside her post at the Université catholique de Louvain, Tulkens was Chairwoman of the Scientific Committee of the European Law-making Research Group (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris) from 1993 to 1998 and editor-in-chief of the journal, Revue internationale de droit pénal, from 1994 to 1998. From 1996 to 1997, she was an Expert for the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture. She has also been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Geneva, Ottawa, Paris I (Pantheon-Sorbonne) and Rennes.

On 1 November 1998, she became a Judge of the European Court of Human Rights in respect of Belgium. She was elected a Section President in 2007 and on 1 February 2011 became one of two Vice-Presidents of the Court, along with the British judge, Sir Nicolas Bratza, and under French President Jean-Paul Costa. She retired from the European Court in September 2012 and was appointed a member of the Human Rights Advisory Panel of the United Nations Mission in Kosovo.

The board of governors of the King Baudouin Foundation is chaired by baroness Françoise Tulkens.