Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut

Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut (born 1960) is a German diplomat, currently serving as chief adviser for European affairs to the second Merkel cabinet (conservative–liberal) in the German Chancellery. The diplomat is the topic-specific sherpa of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
Meyer-Landrut was born in 1960 and was awarded his PhD in history, examining the role of France in German reunification, at the University of Cologne in 1988. In 1987, he joined the German foreign office under the third cabinet of the conservative chancellor Helmut Kohl. Between 1990 and 1993, the diplomat served in Vienna, leading the German negotiations of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, and advised on German foreign affairs in Brussels thereafter (until 1995). From 1995 to 1999 Meyer-Landrut was deputy chief of the central ministerial office in Bonn, responsible for the Amsterdam Treaty and the Common Foreign and Security Policy of the European Union among other things attached to that portfolio.
Between 1999 and summer 2002, the diplomat served as speaker of the permanent representation of the Federal Republic of Germany to the European Union under the social democratic–green Schröder administration and was appointed speaker of the president of the Convention on the Future of Europe by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the then serving convention president and former president of France (1974–81). Between September 2003 and April 2006, Meyer-Landrut advised as leading official on European affairs in the German foreign office and joined the German Chancellery, advising on the same topic, in May of the same year. Since February 2011, the diplomat serves as chief adviser to Merkel on European affairs, thereby succeeding Uwe Corsepius.
Meyer-Landrut is married to a Frenchwoman and father of four children. He is the nephew of Andreas Meyer-Landrut, head of the Bundespräsidialamt under former German president Richard von Weizsäcker (1984–94), and first cousin once removed of singer Lena Meyer-Landrut.