Areas of expertise: EU foreign, security and defence policy
Languages: English, French, Dutch
Dr Steven Blockmans is also Director of Research at CEPS (Brussels), Professor of EU External Relations Law and Governance at the University of Amsterdam and editor-in-chief of the European Foreign Affairs Review.
He is a frequent commentator on EU affairs at major media outlets and regularly briefs senior policy practitioners from the European Union, its member states and G20 country governments. Steven has testified at the foreign affairs and international trade committees of the European Parliament and the UK House of Commons. He is a member of the track 1,5 process between the EU and Russia since 2017 and has participated in track 2 processes between the EU and Australia, India, Mexico and the UK.
Steven is the author of Tough Love: the EU’s relations with the Western Balkans (Springer 2007) and The Obsolescence of the European Neighbourhood Policy (Rowman & Littlefield 2017) and has (co-)edited more than 20 volumes, including The EU’s Role in Global Governance (Oxford University Press 2013), The EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (Edward Elgar 2018) and a trilogy on Democracy in the EU (Rowman & Littlefield 2020). He served as rapporteur of high-level task forces on European Defence Union (chaired by Javier Solana, 2015), EU Institutional Reform (chaired by Danuta Hübner, 2017) and the European External Action Service (chaired by Pierre Vimont, 2021).
For more than 20 years he has combined his academic work with contract research carried out for EU and national donors, consultancy activities and training for professionals. He has advised governments of third countries on their relations with the EU and worked on numerous technical assistance projects in wider Europe and Asia.
Steven previously served as Head of Research at the Asser Institute, an international law centre based in The Hague. From 2010 to 2014, he was a special visiting professor at the Law Faculty of University of Leuven. From 2007 to 2009 he served as a long-term expert on legal approximation in the framework of an EU-sponsored project in support for the Ministry of European Integration of Albania.
