Law studies at the university of Grenoble, France; research assistant at the institute for tax law of the university of Cologne, Germany; from 1977 on at the Court of justice of the European Union in the directorate for legal translation; from 1989 head of the department for rationalising and digitalisation of the tasks of legal translation; 2001 joining the Publications office of the EU and taking over responsibility for CELEX and later for the legal databases of the EU; in parallel as from 1983 teaching assignment at the university of Trier, Germany, in the framework of International legal studies and from 2014 to 2018 teaching assignment at the university of Cologne in the framework of European legal linguistic studies.