Dr. Peter Hefele graduated in Economics and Economic History from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in 1997. He worked as an economic researcher at the Institute for Economy and Society/Bonn and joined the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in 2003 as Head of the Economic Policy/Political Education Department. 2006 he became Head of the China, Southeast Asia, and India at the Department in the Asia and Pacific Team of the KAS in Berlin.
From December 2010 to February 2015, he worked as Head of the China Office of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung in Shanghai. From March 2015 to April 2019, he was Head of the Regional Project “Energy Security and Climate Change” (RECAP), based in Hong Kong SAR/PR China. Between May 2019 and December 2020, he was the Director Asia and Pacific of KAS in Berlin.
Since January 2022, he has been Policy Director of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, the European People’s Party (EPP) think tank in Brussels.
His work focuses on foreign and security policy, economic policy, international development cooperation and energy/climate policy. He is also an expert on Asia’s political, economic and social developments.
He is fluent in German, English and Hungarian, has good knowledge of French and Italian and basic knowledge of Chinese.