The new group of Junior Professional Officers (JPOs) and United Nations Volunteers (UNVs) will be received today at the Quai d'Orsay.

These two programs allow young professionals to be assigned across the world to support UN agencies. The 2018 recruits include 16 JPOs for the UN, two JPOs for the OSCE and 14 UNVs. They will work in 22 UN agencies (United Nations Secretariat, IOM, UNHCR, IAEA, UNRWA, and IFAD in particular), adding to the 33 JPOs and 17 UNVs already deployed.

More than 30,000 volunteers have worked with the UNV program in more than 140 developing countries since 1971. By participating in these programs, France strengthens the work of international organizations in this area, in accordance with President Macron's commitments in support of multilateralism.

European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) – Election of Ursula Bassler

France welcomes yesterday's election of Ursula Bassler as president of the CERN Council. Her candidacy had been put forward jointly by France and Germany.

Deputy director of France's National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics (IN2P3-CNRS) and France's scientific delegate to the CERN Council, Ursula Bassler is a scientist with an established reputation in particle physics. She has worked in Germany (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron), the United States (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) and France (Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies Commission, CNRS).

Founded in 1954, CERN is a scientific laboratory of global importance and with a global reputation. It specializes in particle physics, the discovery of the fundamental constituents of matter and the laws of the universe. It was here that the Higgs boson was observed, with the help of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). France and Switzerland host CERN facilities and are among the nations that are the most heavily involved in its activities.