In a 40-year career with the Board of Trade, London, and later (since 1973) with the EC Commission, Roderick Abbott has been involved in the various aspects of multilateral trade policy, with particular emphasis on negotiations and trade disputes. Born in London, he obtained his Bachelor from the University of Oxford in 1962. From 1973 to 1975, he was Head of Unit in the DG I-A-1 on the GATT and international trade questions. He participated in this context to the Tokyo Ministerial meeting that launched the Tokyo Round in 1973 as well as to the 133 Committee. From 1975 to 1979, he was on detachment to the Delegation in Geneva as deputy Head of delegation during the Tokyo Round, with responsibility for non-tariff barrier agreements, quantitative restrictions and for negotiating new rules on safeguard measures. He returned to the Commission in 1979 as Head of Unit in the DG I-A-1 until he was promoted to Director I-A in 1982, a position he held until 1996. He acted as Lead Commission negotiator for the GATT (tariff) aspects of EC enlargements in 1981 (Greece) and 1985 (Spain and Portugal) and 1995. He participated to the UNCTAD VI Conference held in Belgrade in 1981, and attended the GATT Ministerial meetings in 1982 and 1984. Moreover, during the 1980’s he was regularly a participant in QUAD meetings of Trade Ministers, preparing for the launch of the Uruguay Round, as well as Commission representative on the OECD Trade Committee, and later also in the ECSS. From 1996 to 2000, he was Head of Delegation and Ambassador in Geneva before being nominated as Deputy Director General in the DG Trade from 2002 to 2005. In that capacity he attended each of the four WTO Ministerial Conferences, from Singapore to Doha, and was heavily engaged in the work of the new WTO Dispute Settlement Body, especially some of the important early cases such as the EC banana import regime. In 2003, he attended the Ministerial Conference in Cancún as a deputy director-general at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Following his service in the WTO, he worked with the London School of Economics and the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), a leading trade-policy think tank in Brussels. He also collaborated with several consultancies in Brussels, including GPlus Europe, APCO Worldwide, and Kreab & Gavin Anderson. Following his retirement, he held visiting fellowships at the London School of Economics (LSE), at the European University Institute, in Florence, and at Western University in London, Ontario.