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The Netherlands participates in this organization with headquarters in Garching near Munich (Germany), which operates the La Silla observatory as well as the four 8m telescopes comprising the Very Large Telescope - VLT - at Paranal in Chile. The Dutch members of the ESO Council in 2006 were Jan van de Donk of the Ministerie voor OC&W and Tim de Zeeuw from Leiden; Richard Wade was President of Council. The Director General of ESO until 30 august 2007 is Catherine Cesarsky and as from 1 september 2007 Tim de Zeeuw. Previous Dutch DGs, all with Leiden connections are Adriaan Blaauw, Lo Woltjer and Harry van der Laan. The present Dutch representative on the ESO time allocation committee (OPC) is Michiel Hogerheijde (Leiden), the representative on the scientific and technical advisory committtee (STC) is Huib Jan van Langevelde (Dwingeloo) and the Dutch member of the users committee (UC) is Walter Jaffe (Leiden).