Sami Zeidan (CY/LB) is a diplomat who joined the EU institutions as an official in 2008, starting at the European Commission and moving to the European External Action Service in 2017. He is based in the EEAS Managing Directorate for Multilateral Relations, Human Rights and Democracy, where he has been working on EU relations with the UN system, human rights, and Agenda 2030. He served at the EU Delegation to the UN in Geneva (2017-2021), focusing on green diplomacy and EU representation in UN fora.
Before that, at the European Commission’s Directorate-General (DG) for International Partnerships, Sami Zeidan worked on migration and development during the peak of the migration crisis in Europe (2015–2017). There, he contributed to policy development on forced displacement and managed related projects, including the EU support to the Regional Development and Protection Programme for refugees and host communities in Lebanon and Jordan.
Earlier, in DG Climate Action, Sami Zeidan was a member of the core international climate negotiations team, participating in UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties and contributing to the EU’s first adaptation strategy in 2013, later expanded as part of the Green Deal. He began his EU career in DG Environment as a member of the Multilateral Environmental Agreements legal team, and prior to that served as a diplomat at UN Headquarters in New York.
Sami Zeidan has taught at Harvard University and at the Centre international de formation européenne in Nice. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the City University of New York and a Master of Laws from Harvard University, along with a Master of Arts in Humanities and undergraduate degrees in Law and Biology. He was a Visiting Fellow at Keele University and has published on international law, human rights, and environmental security in international peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.