Stefan Lehne is currently Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe (the Brussels office of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and lecturer at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna. His research focuses on EU foreign and security policy and on the institutional development and reform perspectives of the EU.Following a career as an Austrian diplomat working mostly on multilateral diplomacy and on EU integration, he joined the Policy Unit of the General Secretariat of the Council of the EU and later became director for the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Central Asia in this institution. From 1999 to 2008 he worked with High Representative Javier Solana on crisis-management in the Western Balkans. Inter alia he acted as the EU’s representative in the Kosovo Status process. From 2008 to 2011 he served in the Austrian Foreign Ministry as director general for political affairs.