The 62-year-old engineer Serge Rozen has been elected president of the Coordination Committee of Belgian Jewish Organizations for the next three years.
Rozen succeeds Maurice Sosnowski, who led the CCOJB for the past five years, which were marked by a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Belgium and the terrorist attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels last May in which four people.
The General Assembly of the umbrella body elected Rozen with 92 percent of the votes. The second candidate, the journalist Yossi Lempkowicz, obtained 8 percent.
Serge Rozen has so far served as the director of the Haim Foundation whose mission is to ‘support institutions of the Jewish community. He said his mission was to unite the Jewish community and to make its case with the political authorities of the country. "The Belgian political world must realize that there is the Jewish community is concerned if it has a future here. And to relay this message, we must have a frank and constructive dialogue. The cannot be a place for laxism, and we need to fully apply all the laws in the fight against anti-Semitism," Rozen said in a newspaper interview after his election.
The CCOJB is the leading Jewish umbrella organization in Belgium and the Belgian affiliate of the World Jewish Congress.
