Council of EPI

The Council of EPI is a consultative body of members from the Republic of Macedonia and abroad, which because of their knowledge and expertise, can substantially contribute towards achieving the goals of EPI. In the appointing of the members of the Council, the Managing Board is driven by the need to develop the culture of dialogue, tolerance and contribution in analyzing the different options and possibilities.

The membership in EPI’s Council is done without financial compensation.

Radmila Sekerinska Jankovska

Radmila Sekerinska Jankovska is Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Republic of Macedonia and Minister of Defense.

She was a representative of the citizens in the Assembly the Republic of Macedonia in four mandates (1998-2002, 2006-2008, 2008-2011 и 2011-2014). She was also Head of the National European Integration Council since the establishment in 2008 to 2014. In the period 2002 to 2006, she was Deputy Prime Minister in charge of European Integration and Coordinator for Foreign Assistance. In this period, she prepared the candidacy of the Republic of Macedonia for membership in the European Union and guided the process of internal preparations for securing the candidate status. At that time, the Republic of Macedonia was granted the status of a candidate country for EU membership.

Dr. Antoaneta L. Dimitrova

Dr. Antoaneta L. Dimitrova is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs Leiden University. Her work focussed on the democratic and state transformations of the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and especially the role of the European Union in this process.

In recent years, Antoaneta Dimitrova has been engaged in research collaboration under the FP7 funded project ‘Maximizing the integration Capacity of the European Union: Lessons and Prospects for Enlargement and Beyond’ (MAXCAP). MAXCAP (www.maxcap-project.eu ) investigated the political and economic effects of the 2004-2007 EU enlargement, the strategies the EU developed to cope with the political, social and economic challenges accompanying it, and the lessons for current and future enlargements. From 2016, Antoaneta Dimitrova is coordinating and working on the EU-STRAT project: ‘The EU and Eastern Partnership Countries: An Inside-Out Analysis and Strategic Assessment’.

Adam Fagan

Dr. Adam Fagan is Head of School, holds a chair in European Politics at QMUL, and is also Professorial Fellow at the London School of Economics (LSEE – LSE South East Europe Research). His research focuses on the Europeanization of the post-conflict former Yugoslav states of the Western Balkans and has written extensively on the impact of foreign donor aid to Bosnia-Herzegovina, the building of new policy knowledge and capacities in fragile democracies, as well as evaluating the attempts by the EU to develop civil society and good governance in Serbia and Kosovo. Since September 2007 Adam has been principal investigator on an AHRC-funded £209,000 project examining the Europeanization of environmental governance in Bosnia and Serbia called “EU Compliance in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia (ECoBHAS)”. Adam is a co-researcher in the EU-funded MAXCAP (Maximizing the Integration Capacity of the European Union) research project.

Fatmir Besimi

Dr. Fatmir Besimi is a former Deputy Prime Minister for European Affairs in the Government of the Republic of Macedonia. In 2011, he was the Minister of Defense in the Government of the Republic of Macedonia (the first minister of the Albanian ethnic community in this position) and during that period he was a member of the National Security Council of the Republic of Macedonia. He is also the former Minister of Economy in two terms in 2004 and 2008. Prior to that, he was working as an economist at the World Bank office in Kosovo in 2007, while from 2003-2004 he was also elected Vice-Governor of the National Bank of the Republic of Macedonia.

Juliana Nikolova

Mrs. Juliana Nikolova is a Director of the Centre for Policy Modernization Foundation, publisher since 2003 of the web portal for European integration www.europe.bg. She is a former Secretary of the EU Funds Coordination Council (2009-2011), adviser to the Prime Minister on EU affairs (2009-2012), Director of the European Institute Foundation (2002-2009), founder of the Balkan Information Network (2005), Director of the European Integration and Relations with International Financial Institutions Directorate at the Council of Ministers (2000-2001). She served as a Secretary of the European Integration Council to the Prime Minister (2000-2001) and was a member of the Core Negotiation Team for Bulgaria’s EU Accession (2000-2001).

Mrs. Nikolova was a Deputy Minister of Industry (1999), member of the team dealing with Bulgarian Association Agreement with the EU (1992-2001), member of the Bulgarian WTO Accession team. She was a leading team member of the EFTA and CFTA Agreements.

Tobias Flessenkemper

Tobias Flessenkemper is managing director and founder of the Berlin-based advisory organization which focuses on innovation in democratic governance and security. He is also a senior fellow at the Centre International de Formation Européenne (CIFE) in Nice and a lecturer in European politics at the University of Cologne. In 2012 and 2013 has was a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. From 2004 to 2012 he served in EU Common Security and Defence Policy operations in policy and management functions in the Western Balkans region and Brussels. Before that he worked as advisor for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), UNICEF, the EU and the Berlin-based Centre for International Peace Operations (ZIF).

Tobias Flessenkemper is a programme associate at ECDPM since 2017. He has worked with ECDPM since 2015 on a study on the European Union Special Representative (EUSR) system and on the CIVILEX project, for which he provides expertise on the Common Security and Defence Policy.

Dimitar Belchev

Dimitar Belchev is former diplomat. In 1972 he started working at Macedonian Railways where he conducted the planning, design and construction of power stations for propulsion of electric trains. In 1982 he started working at Generalexport – Belgrade, in the beginning as technical and commercial representative for foreign companies (Siemens from Germany, DAFs from the Netherlands and others) and afterwards as a Director of the branch office in Skopje.

In 1992 he was appointed Undersecretary for Economic Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Macedonia. He participated in the negotiations for accession of the Republic of Macedonia in the specialized agencies of the United Nations, as well as in the negotiations for signing the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the European Commission and its Member States. He has also worked for Macedonia’s permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva (1995-1997) and for Macedonia’s Mission to the European Union (2001-2005). He has concluded his active service in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2010, serving as National Coordinator for Regional Cooperation.

Sasho Klekovski

Sasho Klekovski is an independent consultant. He has twenty years of experience working in managerial positions in the civil sector and five years of consultancy experience. In the late eighties and early nineties, he led the Association of Medical Students of Macedonia and the Association of Students of the University “St. Cyril and Methodius”. In 1993 he was one of the founders and from 1994 he has been the CEO of the Macedonian Center for International Cooperation. From 1998 to 2008 he was a representative of the Macedonian Enterprise Development Foundation.

He was a member of several committees and boards in Macedonia and abroad, including the Board of Transparency Macedonia. Sasho Klekovski was the first co-chairman of the Joint Consultative Committee on Civil Society between the European Union and the Republic of Macedonia for the period 2009-2010. He is Vice president of the Business Council at the University American College – Skopje (UACS) and lecturer of the MBA program at the Faculty of Business Administration from 2014 in the same university. He has a deep understanding and knowledge on the civil society in Macedonia. He has experience in the Balkans (Albania, Kosovo, Romania) and in the Caucasus (Georgia), Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan).

Milada Anna Vachudova

Milada Anna Vachudova is an Associate Professor of Political Science, Jean Monnet Chair for EUStudies, and Chair of the Curriculum in Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has published widely on democratization and political change in postcommunist Europe, on the enlargement of the European Union, and on the impact of international actors on domestic politics. Her book, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage and Integration After Communism, published by Oxford University Press, was awarded the XIIth Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research.

Professor Vachudova is now working on political change and international engagement in the Western Balkans. She has held fellowships from a number of institutions including the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, the Center for International Studies at Princeton University, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, and the National Science Foundation. She holds a BA from Stanford University. As a British Marshall Scholar and a member of St. Antony’s College, she completed a D.Phil. in the Faculty of Politics at the University of Oxford.

Klaudijus Maniokas

Klaudijus Maniokas holds a doctorate in the field of Social Sciences from the University of Vilnius. Having spent more than 10 years dealing with the Lithuania’s accession to the EU in the public sector, he is currently Chairman of the Board of the consulting firm European Social, Legal, and Economic Projects (ESTEP) based in Vilnius, Lithuania. Since 2004 he has led ESTEP in different consultancy assignments focused on public sector investment and efficiency and EU matters in particular. He has been consulting the governments of the Eastern Partnership and Western Balkans on the matters of the EU affairs management for the last ten years.