Ian Lesser

Ian Lesser

Vice President and Executive Director

German Marshall Fund of the US

Ian Lesser is Vice President at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and a member of GMF’s executive team. He serves as Executive Director of the Brussels office of GMF and leads GMF’s work transatlantic relations looking “south,” including the Mediterranean, Turkey and the wider Atlantic. His expertise includes U.S. foreign policy and European and Middle Eastern security affairs.

Prior to joining GMF, Dr. Lesser was a Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Vice President and Director of Studies at the Pacific Council on International Policy. He came to the Pacific Council from the RAND Corporation, where he spent over a decade as a senior analyst and research manager specializing in strategic studies. From 1994-1995, he was a member of the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, responsible for Turkey, Southern Europe, North Africa, and the multilateral track of the Middle East peace process.

A frequent commentator for international media, he has written extensively on foreign and security policy issues. Dr. Lesser was educated at the University of Pennsylvania, the London School of Economics, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and received his D. Phil from Oxford University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the advisory boards of the International Spectator, Turkish Policy Quarterly, and the NATO Defense College Foundation, and has been a senior fellow of the Onassis Foundation in Athens and the Luso-American Foundation in Lisbon.

Thursday 12

  • 16.00 - 16.30

    EU Pact on Migration and Asylum: Last chance or lost opportunity?

    location_onSofitel Brussels Europe

    Negotiations between EU Institutions on a comprehensive reform of the EU Asylum and Migration legislation  have been ongoing for years, bringing uncertainty especially to countries on the EU’s border. Can the EU  muster the will to close this important chapter of EU legislation before the next European elections? 

  • 17.10 - 18.15

    Revisiting EU-Türkiye relations

    location_onSofitel Brussels Europe

    Greek - Turkish relations have been through several ebbs and flows over the past years, alternating  between tension and cooperation. Can the two countries, coming out of fresh election cycles, find  once more their stride towards a new rapprochement?