About me
Career
After his studies, Christophe Payot joined the Belgian Foreign Service as a diplomat in 2000. After a traineeship at our Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York in 2001, he was posted to Pakistan in 2002 as Deputy Head of Mission and was in charge of our Diplomatic Representation in Afghanistan in 2003-2004 and in 2005-2006. He then joined our Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York in 2006 where he was responsible for counterterrorism during the Belgian mandate in the Security Council in 2007-2008.
At the Foreign Ministry, Mr. Payot became Deputy European Correspondent in 2009 and then European Correspondent in 2011 to coordinate the Belgian position in EU foreign policy matters. He was then advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2011 to 2014, in charge of EU Foreign policy and multilateral affairs, as well as the Middle East.
From 2014 to 2017, he was Ambassador of Belgium to the State of Qatar before moving to the Embassy of Belgium in Washington, as Deputy Chief of Mission till July 2021. Prior to his current position as Ambassador, Christophe Payot served as Director of the European Union Trade Policy and World Trade Organization Department at the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, from August
2021 to July 2024. In this capacity, he was in charge of coordinating the Belgian position in trade policy discussions, and was member of the EU Trade Policy Committee.
Academia
Mr. Payot studied at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL) where he obtained his degree in Political Sciences in 1999. From there, he went on to get a Master in Financial Economics at the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) in 2000.
Personal life
Christophe Payot was born in 1977 in Brussels. He is married and a father of 2 young children. He speaks fluent French, Dutch and English, as well as Spanish. Mr. Payot likes running, football and traveling.
