Moderator: Tobias Flessenkemper

Tobias Flessenkemper is a senior fellow and Balkans project director at the Centre iIternational de Formation Européenne (CIFE) in Nice. Since 2013 he has led CIFE as a key facilitator of the reflection forum on the Western Balkans in the European Union, a high-level series of seminar and conferences in France critically accompanying the Berlin process and the EU-integration process. He is the co-founder and managing director of elbarlament.org, an advisory practice based in Berlin that focuses on innovation in governance and communication. He holds a Magister Artium in political science from the University of Cologne and the European Master’s in International Humanitarian Assistance (NOHA) from the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany) and was a visiting fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (German Institute for International and Security Affairs) from 2012 to 2013. Previously he served in senior advisory and management positions in the EU Police Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, EUPOL Proxima in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and as CSDP expert of the German Centre for International Peace Operations (ZIF). From 1998 to 2001 he was Secretary General of the European Youth Forum in Brussels, preceded by various professional and voluntary assignments promoting European integration in Belgium, Germany and Italy. His main research interests include the institutional, constitutional, security and communication and cultural dimensions of European integration and EU external action.