Rosa Balfour is the director of Carnegie Europe and an internationally recognised and widely published expert in European politics and foreign and security policy. Her current research focuses on the relationship between domestic politics and Europe’s global role.
Iain Begg is a professor at the European Institute of the London School of Economics. His main research work is on economic governance in Europe. He has recently directed and participated in studies on the EU budget, including how it will be affected by the likely forthcoming enlargement of the Union.
Jan Krzysztof Bielecki is the Former Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland. He has a long history of working in administration as, among others, the Minister for European Integration, co-founder of the Liberal-Democratic Congress and Freedom Union and the Executive Director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. He used to be the President and Chief Executive Officer at Pekao Bank S.A. Bielecki was nominated by Prime Minister Donald Tusk as the Chairman of the Economic Council. He was also appointed the President of the Polish Institute of International Affairs Council (PISM). He is currently employed at EY Poland as the Chairman of the Partners Board.
Mark Brzezinski is the Ambassador of the United States to Poland. Ambassador Brzezinski previously served as U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, spearheading innovative new approaches to advance U.S.-European trade and landing key Swedish investments. He was asked by the White House to lead a strategic effort on the Arctic as the first Executive Director of the White House’s Arctic Executive Steering Committee. Ambassador Brzezinski was founder and previously the principal of Brzezinski Strategies LLC. He was a Managing Director at Makena Capital Management. For a decade, he was a partner at the law firm McGuireWoods LLP. He served on President Clinton’s National Security Council staff, first as a Director for Russia and Eurasia, and then as a Director for the Balkans. Ambassador Brzezinski is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Poland, during which he researched and wrote a book entitled “The Struggle for Constitutionalism in Poland.”
Nikola Dimitrov was the Minister of Foreign Affairs for North Macedonia. He was the chief negotiator of the Prespa Agreement. Dimitrov is an experienced diplomat, think-tanker, and political activist. He is currently the President of the Balkan Center for Constructive Policies – Solution, a council member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group.
Martin Ehl is a journalist and author working at the Czech economic daily Hospodářské noviny. Senior Fellow at Visegrad Insight, Council Member at the European Council on Foreign Relations, author of books on Central Europe and globalisation. Covering Central Europe, security, defence industry and transatlantic relations. Tweeting as @MartinCZV4EU.
Jan Farfał is the Europe Enlargement Fellow at Visegrad Insight. He is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Oxford and Research Assistant to Timothy Garton Ash. Jan Farfał is the co-founder of the Club Alpbach Poland, Committee Representative for the Security Track at the European Forum Alpbach, and visiting fellow at IWM – Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna. Researcher in the project Europe in a Changing World at the European Studies Center at the University of Oxford.
Cristina Gherasimov is the Deputy Prime-Minister for European Integration and Chief Negotiator with the European Union at the Government of the Republic of Moldova since 2024. Her previous roles include serving as the Adviser on Foreign Policy and European Integration to the President of the Republic of Moldova as well as holding the position of Secretary General of the Presidential Office. She also served as Secretary of State at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and European Integration. Prior to her service in the Moldovan government, Cristina Gherasimov has gained experience in academia, research institutes, think tanks, and public organisations.
Peter Grk is the Secretary General of the Bled Strategic Forum since 2016 and the National Coordinator for the Western Balkans at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia. With more than 20 years of experience in the diplomatic service, Peter Grk has held posts in Ankara, Copenhagen and Brussels. During Slovenia’s EU Presidency, he served as the Chair of the Committee for Civilian Aspects of Crisis Management (CIVCOM). He was also posted to New York as a Political Coordinator at the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Slovenia to the UN and served as an advisor in the Cabinet of the Foreign Minister of Slovenia and as Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister of Slovenia.
Vincent Guérend is the Director for the European Union at the French Ministry for Europe
and Foreign Affairs. He spent twelve years in the European institutions (European Commission and European External Action Service). Guérend was the French ambassador to Ireland, chief of staff to Amélie de Montchalin and deputy chief of staff to Benita Ferrero-Waldner. He was the Ambassador of the European Union to Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam, Deputy Head of Mission in the French embassy in Ankara, and political counsellor in the French embassy in India. Guérend was the first Deputy Secretary General for Franco-German Cooperation and adviser to the German Minister of State for Europe Hans-Martin Bury. He was a desk officer in the Directorate for European Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Guérend did his national service as a second lieutenant in the French army.
Anna Hofmann heads the Research and Scholarship Department at the ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS in Hamburg, focusing on global and cross-sectoral knowledge transfer. Her main research interests are foreign policy, securitisation, migration and German-Polish-French relations.
Eduard Hulicius is the Czech Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2023. He worked in the European Parliament for the EPP Group and in the cabinet of the Czech EU Commissioner. He is responsible for European integration, international and interinstitutional relations as well as consumer protection policy.
Ruslanas Iržikevičius is the Director of the Media Support Fund in Lithuania. He is the founder, former publisher, and former editor-in-chief of the Lithuania Tribune news portal, lrytas.lt, DELFI.lt, and 15min.lt English sections. Iržikevičius is a Senior Fellow at Visegrad Insight.
Beata Jaczewska is the Director of the Department of Economic Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. In the years 2015-2018 she served as the Executive Director of the International Visegrad Fund. After completing her function at the IMF, she moved to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the role of a Ministerial Advisor. Her work in the state administration also includes the position of an Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Climate and Environment. She has also worked in Deloitte as a Global GPS Climate Action & Sustainability Advisor.
Magdalena Jakubowska is the Vice President and Director of Operations at the Res Publica Foundation. In this role, she is responsible for strategic foresight and programme planning, institutional cooperation and strategic development, looking at the EU and transatlantic affairs through the lens of democratic security. One of her flagship projects concerns women empowerment in security (#WomenAreNATO). Previously, Magda Jakubowska worked at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and the Polish Institute of International Affairs.
Małgorzata Kałużyńska is the Director of the Economic Department of the European Union at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland. She has the leading role in negotiations of financial frameworks of the EU budget, strategic autonomy, foresight, relations between the EU and the UK and deals with EU economic policies, energy and climate policy.
Paweł Karbownik is the Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Poland. He served as an advisor to the president of the European Council on G7, G20 and EU strategic agenda from 2014 to 2019. Previously, he was a deputy director of the EU Economic Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, where he led the team responsible for, among other things, preparing the Polish Presidency of the EU Council in 2011, the drafting of the energy union concept and the 2014 sanctions on Russia. He also gained professional experience in the European Parliament in the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee as well as in multinantional corporations.
Miriam Kosmehl is the Senior Expert on Eastern Europe at Bertelsmann Stiftung. Her research focus is on the Eastern Partnership, geopolitical ambitions in the EU neighbourhood and anti-corruption. Previously, she was the Head of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation’s office for Ukraine and Belarus.
Agnieszka Kowalska is the Director of the European Policy Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. Within this capacity, she is responsible for Poland’s EU membership with respect to such matters as the EU’s political and institutional development, treaty reforms, political aspects of the development of the EU’s internal and external policies, enlargement policy, macro-regional strategies, and the external dimension of the EU’s area of freedom, security and justice. Previously, she served as the Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in London.
Marek Kręt is the Head of NATO Policy Unit at the Security Policy Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. Previously, he served as the Head of the Political Section at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Paris. His former positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs include First Secretary at the Department for Security Policy as well as Second Secretary in the Policy Unit of the Minister’s Office. He has also worked at the Permanent Delegation of Poland to NATO.
Kateryna Kruk is the Regional Public Policy Lead Central and Eastern Europe at Meta. She specialises in international relations, with the focus on Eastern Europe and Western Balkans, and information security. Prior to joining Meta, she worked at the European Parliament, Ukrainian parliament and government. She also served as a political analyst and information security expert.
Henryka Mościcka-Dendys is an Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland since 2024. She has extensive experience in working in the administration, she previously held positions including the Director of the Coordination Section in the European Union Department, Director of the European Policy Department and Director of the Investment Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She also served as the Undersecretary of State for Parliamentary Affairs, European Policy and Human Rights. Henryka Mościcka-Dendys also has diplomatic background as she held the position of the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Denmark. She is a member of the Council of the Polish Institute of International Affairs and the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Ignacy Niemczycki is an Undersecretary of State at the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology since 2024. Previously, he worked in the government administration at, among others, the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland, Office of the Committee for European Integration, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Poland to the European Union. He used to manage the European division at Polityka Insight and work at an international corporation.
Kalypso Nicolaïdis is the Chair in Global Affairs at the School of Transnational Governance (EUI), where inter alia she convenes the EUI Democracy Forum. She is currently on leave from the University of Oxford and was professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and at Ecole Nationale d’Admistration, Paris. She has worked with numerous EU institutions, including as a member of the European Council’s reflection group on the future of Europe chaired by Felipe González and is a Council member of ECFR. She also served as advisor on European affairs to George Papandreou in the 90s and early 2000s, the Dutch and UK governments, the European Parliament, the European Commission, OECD and UNCTAD.
Karolina Ostrzyniewska is the Director of the Department of the Committee for European Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. She is responsible for coordinating preparations for meetings of the Committee for European Affairs and the mandates for COREPER, General Affairs Council and PL position for the European Council. She is also involved in preparing the program of the Polish Presidency in the Council of the EU in 2025. Previously, she served as a national expert in the Directorate-General for Internal Market (DG MARKT) and Deputy Permanent Representative of Poland to the EU, representing Poland in the Permanent Representatives Committee (COREPER I).
Łukasz Pawłowski is the Acting Director at the Department of Strategy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. He is a former journalist and author of two books – “Druga fala prywatyzacji” (Second Wave of Privatization; 2020) and “Stany Podzielone Ameryki” (Divided States of America; 2024). He is also the co-host of na award-winning “Podkast amerykański” (American Podcast).
Oana Zamfir is the director of GlobalFocus Center, a foreign policy think-tank. She is the former Romanian State Secretary for EU Affairs. Oana is also an associate expert with ECFR and Carnegie Europe and a Europe’s Futures Senior Fellow at IWM Vienna. Her expertise covers mainly geopolitics and security in the EU/NATO neighbourhood, EU enlargement and reform, democratic resilience and shifting governance models.
Marek Prawda is an Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland since 2024. He used to be the Head of the European Commission Representation in Warsaw. Marek Prawda served as the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Poland to the European Union and before that he was the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Sweden and Germany. Previously he was employed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the Director of the Western Europe Department and the Director of the Secretariat of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Wojciech Przybylski is the Editor-in-Chief of Visegrad Insight and President of the Res Publica Foundation. He is a political analyst heading Visegrad Insight’s policy foresight on European affairs. His expertise includes foreign policy and political culture. Europe’s Future Fellow at IWM Vienna. Wojciech also co-authored a book Understanding Central Europe, Routledge 2017.
Charlotte Ruhe is the Managing Director for Central and South Eastern Europe at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. She is responsible for the delivery of business and policy reform in 18 countries across from Poland and the Baltic States to Greece. Central and South East Europe includes the Western Balkans and all EU countries of operation of the Bank and accounts for more than one third of EBRD’s business.
Manuel Sarrazin is the German Federal Government Special Representative for the Countries of the Western Balkans. He also serves as President of the Southeast Europe Association, Vice President of the European Movement Germany, and Member of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation for Polish–German Cooperation. He began his political career on the Executive Committee of Alliance 90/the Greens’ Harburg section. He used to be the Member of the Hamburg State Parliament and later he was a Member of the German Bundestag. Sarrazin served on the Bundestag’s Committee for European Affairs, the Committee for Foreign Affairs, as Spokesperson and Ombudsperson for European Policy for the parliamentary group of the Greens and as the Eastern European Policy spokesperson.
Viktória Serdült is a senior journalist at the Hungarian online news portal hvg.hu and its weekly print publication HVG. She focuses on domestic affairs and the European Union.
Nicolas Tenzer is a civil servant, guest professor at Sciences Po Paris, Chair of the Center for Study and Research on Political Decision and non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. He is the author of three official reports for the French government and of 23 books, including Our War. Crime and decision: Reframing Strategic Thinking. His foreign policy and security blog Tenzer Strategics is read worldwide.
Jacob Turowski is the Public Policy Director for Central and Eastern Europe at Meta. He is responsible for building relationships between Meta and legislators, regulators, NGOs, and other communities interested in the Internet’s impact on society and the economy. Prior to joining Meta, he led the public policy and regulatory team at UPC Poland, the first cable operator in Poland. He gained international experience in the digital economy in Brussels, working on the digital agenda and European regulations for PwC and Belgacom, among others.
Ivan Vejvoda is a Permanent Fellow and head of Europe’s Futures Programme at IWM Vienna since 2017. Ivan Vejvoda served as the Senior Foreign Policy Adviser to Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjić. He was the Senior Vice President at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Executive Director at the Balkan Trust for Democracy. He has taught political theory and science in the UK and the USA and published extensively.
Marcin Zaborowski is a Senior Fellow at the GLOBSEC security and defence programme and a Senior Fellow at Visegrad Insight. In the past, Marcin served as the Executive Director of the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) and Executive Vice-President of the Centre for European Policy Analysis.
Valbona Zeneli is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council with a dual affiliation at the Europe Center and the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Previously, she served as a professor of national security studies and chair of strategic engagements at the U.S. Department of Defense George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies