Ambassador Christoph Heusgen has been the Chairman of the Munich Security Conference since 2022. Previously, he served as Germany’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2017 to 2021. Prior to this appointment, he was the Foreign Policy and Security Adviser to Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, beginning in 2005. He served as Director and Head of the Policy Unit for High Representative Javier Solana in the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union from 1999 to 2005.
Between 1988 and 1999, Ambassador Heusgen served in various capacities at the Foreign Office in Bonn, including Deputy Director-General for European Affairs from 1997 to 1999 and a member of Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel’s Private Office in charge of European Affairs from 1993 to 1997, serving as Deputy Head since 1994. From 1990 and 1992, he was Deputy Head of the special section in charge of negotiations on the Treaty of Maastricht. He was Private Secretary to the Coordinator for Franco-German Relations from 1988 to 1990.
From 1986 to 1988, Ambassador Heusgen worked in Germany’s Paris Embassy, having begun his Foreign Service career in the Press and Economic Affairs Office of the German Consulate in Chicago, where he worked from 1983 to 1986. He joined the Foreign Service in 1980. Ambassador Heusgen graduated from the University of Saint Gallen in Switzerland and studied at Georgia Southern College in the United States. He earned a post-graduate degree from the University of Saint Gallen.