Born in 1967 in Finland, Pekka Hakala is a Head of Unit of the Strategy and Innovation Unit in the Directorate General for External Policies in the European Parliament based in Brussels.

In 1992, Mr Hakala got a Master’s Degree in Social Sciences specialising in the Middle Eastern contemporary history and politics from the University of Helsinki. He did post-graduate studies on EU politics and history of Africa at the University of Copenhagen in 1993-4. Following several teaching assignments in post-secondary education in Finland, in 1996 he took up a post as an administrator of parliamentary business, in the European Parliament in the General Secretariat, dealing with the EP’s relations with Slovenia, Western Balkans and South Caucasus.

Since 2001 Mr Hakala occupied positions in the different departments of the European Parliament, such as internal EU legislation, human resources planning and organisational development. From 2008 until 2010, he was the advisor to the Director-General for Communication before joining the Policy Department, where he worked for four years as a policy analyst worked as a policy analyst specialising on the MENA region (The Middle East and North Africa) and was nominated Head of Unit in 2014.
He served in that position until November 2020 having assumed his current assignment as of February of that same year.