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).

The foreign-policy solidarity gap

European solidarity is though but necessary ? especially in today?s economic, political and security climate

The quiet EU-Russia summit

This EU-Russia summit is set to be a big disappointment. Nicu Popescu discusses why.

Avoiding a new iron curtain

As European leaders travel to Prague for tomorrow’s Eastern Partnership summit, the Eastern neighbourhood states are experiencing the worst political, security and economic crisis they have faced since their independence in 1991

Moldavija – pozabljena de?ela na robu EU

Če v Bruslju ne bodo vodili “dejavne” politike do Moldavije, bo v njej zavladal avtoritarni re?im, kakr?nega imajo v sosednji Belorusiji

EU unity and divisions on the East

The EU must take a serious took at the strategy it employs to its East – the disunity on how to deal with Russia and the Eastern Neighbourhood is paralysing

Putting Moldova on the map

The European Union is the only political actor with the credibility to find a solution to the current crisis in Moldova writes Nicu Popescu

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