Michael Köhler is a nonresident senior fellow with the Transatlantic Project at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. Köhler also serves as ambassador and co-lead of the Grand Bargain agreement in Geneva, which is aimed at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian action.
From 1994 to 2024, he worked in the European Commission. From 2019 to 2024, Köhler was deputy director-general for European civil protection and humanitarian aid operations and later acting director-general. Previously, he was director for European Union (EU) neighbourhood policy at the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations, where he was responsible for cooperation with Mediterranean Arab countries and Israel. He has also served as director for the eastern and southern neighbourhood in the Directorate-General for Development and International Cooperation, head of cabinet to the commissioner for energy, and head of cabinet to the commissioner for maritime affairs and fisheries.
Before his service for the EU, he worked as a representative of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Morocco and Tunisia, and later as an official in the Policy Planning Department of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economic Co-operation and Development.
Köhler holds a PhD in history and Middle Eastern Studies from Hamburg University and has more than thirty years of teaching experience. Since 1997, he has been a professor for Europe and the Mediterranean at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, and he also teaches at Université Paris1–Panthéon-Sorbonne, France. He is also a professor of Mediterranean cooperation and security at LUISS Guido Carlì’s Master Programme in Rome, Italy. Köhler is an associate senior fellow and board member of various EU, German, Belgian, Spanish, Swiss, and United Kingdom-based foundations and think tanks focused on international relations, peace and mediation, and development studies.