Experts & Staff

Nicu Popescu

ECFR Alumni · Director, Wider Europe programme

Areas of expertise

Russian domestic and foreign policies; Eastern Partnership countries and their relations with the EU; post-Soviet conflicts; cybersecurity

Languages

English, Russian, French, Romanian

Biography

Nicu Popescu was the director of the Wider Europe programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, and he works from ECFR’s Paris office. His topics of focus include EU’s relations with Russia and the Eastern Partnership countries.

In 2019, Popescu served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of Moldova. Previously, he worked as a senior analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies (2013-2018); senior advisor on foreign policy  to the prime minister of Moldova (2010, 2012-2013); senior research fellow at ECFR’s London office (2007-2009, 2011-2012), and as a research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels (2005-2007).

Popescu teaches at Sciences-Po Paris. He holds a PhD in International Relations from the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. He is author of the EU foreign policy and post-Soviet conflicts: stealth intervention (Routledge 2010), and co-editor of Russia Rising: Putin’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East and North Africa (with Dimitar Bechev and Stanislav Secrieru, I.B. Tauris 2021) and Democratization in EU Foreign Policy (with Benedetta Berti and Kristina Mikulova, Routledge 2015).

Russian and EU powers of attraction

Does the eastern neighbourhood want to join forces with Russia, be part of the EU or go it alone?

Moldova defies post-Soviet traditions

Moldova is the only CIS country with an uninterrupted cycle of legal and constitutional transfers of power through elections since 1991

Go east, Sweden

The Swedish presidency should tour the EU’s eastern periphery to ensure the region does not feel forgotten

Elections in Moldova. Again.

On 29 July Moldova will hold early parliamentary elections. Nicu Popescu offers a snapshot of the country two days before the elections.

The end of ?de facto states?

Nicu Popescu comments on developments in Abkhazia and South Ossetia after their recognition by Russia

A Swedish-led listening tour of the East

The EU should start listening and involving the small and fragile states of the eastern neighbourhood, and the Swedish Presidency should be the body lead this “listening tour” charge

Reinvigorating the EU?s Eastern Policy

There will be dire consequences on the EU’s eastern border unless the EU rethinks its eastern neighbourhood strategy

Publications

Articles

A digital agenda for the Eastern Partnership

By reforming the Eastern Partnership, the EU can capitalise on the huge opportunities for economic and social development created by digitalisation

How Russia and the West try to weaken each other

The West and Russia are both worse off for their efforts to try to weaken each other. This competition will only end when one side feels it is losing the race.

Podcasts

Events

In the media