IDM MANAGING BOARD
Dr. Robert LICHTNER
is head of the Danube Strategy Point, the secretariat of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR), which has been based in Vienna and Bucharest since 2018. The EUSDR is a large-scale strategy for territorial cooperation and regional development. It was founded on the initiative of Austria and Romania in 2010 by the European Commission and nine EU Member States (Bulgaria, Germany, Croatia, Austria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary), three EU candidate countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia) and two EU neighbours (Republic of Moldova and Ukraine), and adopted by the Council of the European Union in 2011. From the origin of the Danube in the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the strategy thus comprises 14 states with a total of 115 million inhabitants. Dr Lichtner works on behalf of the City of Vienna (Wien Holding). He has extensive management experience in the private and public sectors, including media and publishing, as well as non-university research and development. Dr Lichtner also has board experience in public and private institutions, associations and interest groups. He holds a PhD in Slavic Studies from the University of Vienna and speaks 7 languages.