After graduating in economics from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 1976, Michel Englert started his professional career in various domains and institutions. These included the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico, several research firms and the Federal Planning Bureau, where he worked in the field of energy demand modelling. After working as an assistant professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles from 1982 to 1983, he returned to the Federal Planning Bureau (FPB) to work in economic forecasting, interactions between overall taxation and macroeconomic context, impact analysis of shocks on the Belgian economy, fiscal policy and long-term forecasts of public finances. In the latter field, he developed the first version of the central model of the MALTESE system of models (Model for Analysis of Long-Term Evolution of Social Expenditure). This model was designed to assess the budgetary cost of ageing and is currently still being used.

Since 1995, Michel Englert has been Plan advisor and Head of the Directorate General of the FPB. The Directorate General is charged with the study of short-, medium- and long-term macroeconomic and budgetary evolutions of the Belgian economy and the impact of economic policy measures and other shocks on these evolutions. He also leads the Belgian delegations to the “EPC Working Group on Ageing Populations and Sustainability” of the Economic Policy Committee of the ECOFIN Council and to the OECD “macroeconomic and structural policies” working group. He is a member of the Belgian delegation to the Social Protection Committee of the EPSCO Council and represents the FPB in the Study Committee on Ageing. In addition, Michel Englert lectures on macroeconomics at the Université catholique de Louvain in Mons (UCL Mons).