Staff and Experts

Staff Profile: Jonas Parello-Plesner

Recent Commentary

• What is Europe's role in Asia-Pacific?
  11 Mar 13
• Will Russia pivot East or West?
  28 Jan 13
• The weibo generation can reboot China
  25 Jan 13
• The view from the capitals: the EU budget summit
  21 Nov 12
• Reinventing Europe: Denmark caught between ‘ins’ and ‘outs’
  24 Oct 12

Read More > Commentary

Recent Blogs

• China - Germany: A ‘new special relationship’
  22 May 13
• Will China become an Arctic observer?
  14 May 13
• The Chinese scramble into Greenland over-hyped
  13 May 13
• After Cyprus: China watches for its money in the euro zone
  01 May 13
• Greenland: a great power pattern?
  17 Apr 13

Read More > Blogs

recent press

• Voice of America
  21 May 13
• The Telegraph
  20 May 13
• European Voice
  16 May 13
• Le Monde
  22 Apr 13

Read More >

Jonas joined ECFR as Senior Policy Fellow in 2010 directly from a position as Executive Director of a Danish development NGO. Prior to that he pursued a diplomatic career. 

He served as Denmark’s Senior Advisor on China and North East Asia from 2005-2009 and has engaged in numerous diplomatic exchanges with China including the negotiations for a Strategic Partnership between Denmark and China in 2008. He was also one of the chief architects in elaborating a Danish Strategy on China as a whole-of-government exercise. Jonas also knows the EU-machinery from the inside with four years’ experience as Denmark’s Capital representative on Asia affairs (COASI) in the EU’s Council of Ministers.

He has been posted to Paris as a Danish diplomat in 2003-2005 but was also working in the French diplomatic service, in the MFA’s think tank. Here he was engaged in the early thinking about blueprints for what much, much later became the European diplomatic service (EEAS).  In 2002, he was working for the Danish EU Presidency on economic and budgetary issues.  

He has appeared on panels at the US Congress (USCC-Commission) and at the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs and international trade committees. He contributes to a weekly blog on Carnegie Europe on European questions set by Judy Dempsey from the International Herald Tribune.

Jonas has written op-eds and is quoted in Financial Times, Le Monde, International Herald Tribune, European Voice, Frankfurter Rundschau, EU-Observer, E!Sharp, Asia Times, East Asia Forum. He also appeared on CNN,al Jazeera, Bloomberg, France 24,Channel 4, Danish Broadcast.

At ECFR, he co-authored briefs on China and Germany: a new special relationship?and on the Scramble for Europe, about the Chinese economic presence in EU, the European Foreign Policy Scorecard 2010 and 2011 (China sections), China’s Janus-faced Response to Arab Revolutions.

He is a graduate of London School of Economics, Copenhagen University and the Ecole nationale d’administration (ENA) in Paris. He speaks fluent Danish, English and French, and proficient German, Spanish, and basic Mandarin.

Contact details: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) ;

Mob. (UK) +44 (0) 7787 431 820

Mob. (DK) +45 (0) 513 453 11

Twitter: Follow @jonasPplesner