Amb. (Ret.) Karel Kovanda
Former Deputy Director General, External Relations, European Commission; Former Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic to NATO, Prague

Amb. Karel Kovanda served as Deputy Director General of External Relations in the European Commission from April 2005 until the end of 2010. His areas of responsibility included the European common foreign and security policy; multilateral relations and human rights; relations with developed countries outside the EU, such as those of North America, East Asia, Australia et al. Amb. Kovanda simultaneously served as the European Commission's Political Director, in bilateral as well as G8 contexts. Prior to joining the European Commission, Amb. Kovanda was a senior diplomat in the Czech Foreign Service, from 1991 to 2005.


Stefanie Babst
NATO Acting Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy, NATO Headquarters, Brussels

Dr. Stefanie Babst has been NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy since May 2006. Before that, she was the Head of NATO's Country Section in the Public Diplomacy Division and a Lecturer of Russian and East European Studies at the Federal Armed Forces Command & General Staff College in Hamburg. She is also an active member of WIISS, Women in International Security Studies.


Amb. Tacan Ildem
Director General for International Security Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, Ankara

In 1980, Mr. Ildem served in the Military service as Deputy Special Advisor for Foreign Policy to the Secretary-General of the National Security Council. In 1981 he became the Second and later First Secretary at the Turkish Delegation to the North Atlantic Council in Brussels. In 1989 he worked as the Political Counsellor at the Turkish Embassy in Washington D.C. In 2000 he became the Special Advisor to the Undersecretary of the MFA (briefly), then Chief of Cabinet and Principal Foreign Policy Advisor to the President of the Republic of Turkey.

Eimert van Middelkoop
Minister of Defence of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

H.E. Eimert van Middelkoop was appointed Minister of Defence in the fourth Balkenende government on 22 February 2007. Prior to that, from 1989 until 2002 he was a member of the House of Representatives of the States General. He has been a member of the Senate of the States General since 2003. Mr. van Middelkoop has held numerous positions, in particular as member of the supervisory committee of the Social and Cultural Planning Office, chair of the interministerial policy review committee on task specialisation in European defence, secretary/treasurer of the Centre for Parliamentary History in Nijmegen, member of the Advisory Board of the East-West Parliamentary Practice Project, member of the feedback group of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, deputy chair of the Advisory Board of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations “Clingendael” and member of the Supervisory Council of the Institute for Multiparty Democracy. He has also been a freelancer for the Evangelical Broadcasting Association (EO) and a columnist for the Nederlands Dagblad.

In parallel with his government and diplomatic career, Prof. Balázs has been dealing with research and teaching since more than three decades. He is a ScD of the Hungarian Academy of Science. He was nominated Professor of the Corvinus University in 2000 and joined CEU as a full time Professor in 2005. Prof. Balázs served as a State Secretary for Industry and Trade (1992 – 1993) and a State Secretary for European Integration (2002 – 2003). He was Ambassador of Hungary in Denmark, Germany and at the EU in Brussels. He was also the Government Representative of Hungary in the European Convention. In 2004 he was nominated the first Hungarian Member of the European Commission responsible for regional policy. In 2009 – 2010 he was Foreign Minister of Hungary.