Heather Grabbe

Heather Grabbe (born 8 August 1970) is a political scientist, activist, and director of the Open Society European Policy Institute in Brussels, Belgium.

Between 2004 and 2009, Grabbe worked as senior advisor to then European Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn. Grabbe was responsible in his cabinet for the Balkans and Turkey. Prior to working for the Commission, Grabbe was deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, publishing widely on EU enlargement and other European issues. Grabbe’s work has been published, among others, in the Financial Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Guardian. In 2018, she spoke at TEDx Brussels and at the Belgian Senate Superdemocracy series on the importance of critical thinking and mindful engagement with post-truth politics, and how technology is affecting the openness of societies and quality of democracy.

Grabbe has authored several seminal studies of the EU enlargement process, including the 2006 book, The EU's transformative power : Europeanization through conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe.