Ambassador Kilian Wahl

Ambassador Kilian Wahl is a distinguished expert in crisis prevention and crisis management with a wealth of experience in dialogue facilitation, security sector reform and institution building with special emphasis on South East Europe.

Before taking office as Head of the OSCE Mission to Skopje in November 2022, he served as Deputy Head of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo.

Born in West Berlin's American sector, Kilian Wahl grew up in Toronto and Berlin. He studied Communication, Law and Art History at the Freie Universität Berlin. In 2004, he took the position of Director of Communication and Chief Spokesperson of the first ever launched European Rule of Law Mission, EUPM, in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. His career further led him to Kosovo, where he moved in 2011 for the position of Deputy Chief of Staff of EULEX, the EU’s largest mission ever in the world. In this function, he became part of the technical negotiation team of the EU-facilitated Dialogue between Belgrade and Pristine/Pristina, and oversaw implementation of agreements on the ground. After two years of parental leave, Kilian Wahl in 2017 returned to Kosovo on behalf of the European External Action Service as Political Advisor on the EU-facilitated Dialogue.

Prior to his engagement in South East Europe, Kilian Wahl had a very successful career as a journalist, including as presenter of Germany’s most popular TV news show, “Tagesschau”. He won the European Excellence Award for Communication in 2009 and received the Common Security and Defence Policy Service Medal in 2004 and 2012. He is a returning speaker at Johns Hopkins University SAIS Bologna.

Ambassador Wahl speaks German, English, French and some Serbo-Croatian. He is married and has five children.