Michel Poulain, FNRS (National Fund for Scientific Research), is Professor at the Faculté des sciences économiques, politiques et sociales of the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) and founder member of the Groupe d'étude de Démographie Appliquée (GéDAP). He works on data collection, internal and international migrations and initiated the work of harmonising EU migration statistics in Eurostat in 1989, since when he has been continuously involved in the field