Areas of Expertise
- Europe and European integration
- The EU’s internal and external security policies
- Relations between EU members and UK European policy
Short Bio
Dr. Roderick Parkes has been director of the Research Institute of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) until January 31, 2024. He also headed the Alfred von Oppenheim Center for the Future of Europe, where he works on issues of European integration and the EU’s role in the world. He joined DGAP from the Institute for Security Studies, a Paris-based agency of the EU, where he provided advice to decision-makers on dealing with the intersection of EU internal security and foreign policy.
Over the past 15 years, Parkes has worked across Europe. At the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI), he worked on a special research project for the foreign ministry on the geopolitics of migration; at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM), he headed the Europe Program; and at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), he worked as a researcher in Berlin before heading its liaison office to EU institutions and NATO.
Parkes holds a PhD from the University of Bonn and studied at Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh, and Sciences-Po Grenoble. He has taught at the European Security and Defense College, NATO School Oberammergau, and NATO Defense College.
Languages
English, German, French
[Last updated: February 2024]
Contributions
Protecting Eden, or the Dark New Geopolitics of “Fortress Europe”
The EU is justifying its adoption of power politics with the accusation that the outside world started it. In fact, the EU—and Germany—has been practicing retrograde power politics for some time and is purposefully blocking out the option of returning to its own, better past.
Filling Europe’s Geopolitical Vacuum
The European Political Community is being launched today at a summit of 44 states in Prague without a clear concept of what it is for. There is a chance now, however, for Germany to finally show leadership and broker a deal between France and Poland to move the EU forward.
2022 Is the New ... 2001
This year is shaping up to be a pendulum year—a moment in history when the big formative forces of world affairs reverse direction. There are telling parallels with the year 2001. Europe, however, needs to draw the right lessons.
Social Distancing in International Relations
There has been much heralding of the end of globalization wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. But a closer look reveals that, if anything, the crisis could bind the US, the EU, and China closer together, if in a less stable way.