Bridging the gap between research and policy in international affairs: A practitioner's perspective

On 29 May 2025, the European Studies Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford University, welcomed Giulio Venneri, Deputy Director in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, for a seminar chaired by Eli Gateva, Departmental Lecturer in International Relations at Oxford University. Venneri—who began his career in the Italian Foreign Ministry before joining successive EU institutions—has combined frontline policy work on Albania and North Macedonia with teaching posts in Rome, Trento and London. His new book, Learning Policy Advice, distils nearly two decades of experience into a practical guide for anyone seeking to navigate the leap from academic research to policy-making.

Venneri opened by recalling his own “cold shower” moment on joining Italy’s Foreign Service. Fresh from completing a PhD on Bosnia and sovereignty, he confidently drafted his first briefing on Canada’s embrace of the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine—only to be told by his head of office that, however sophisticated his analysis, it was far too dense for a busy minister. Forced back to the drawing board, Venneri learned that policy writing must be both vertically accessible—so that your political masters can grasp key arguments at a glance—and horizontally calibrated, empowering them to advocate effectively in bilateral or multilateral settings. This anecdote underpins his conviction that academic rigour, rather than being jettisoned, must be re-engineered into concise, audience-tailored advice.

Learning Policy Advice is structured around three pillars. First, Venneri “front-loads” the trauma of that cold shower, inviting readers to test themselves with realistic simulations—drafting talking points or speeches under tight deadlines, armed only with minimal background material. Only after this exercise does he introduce the building blocks of policy writing: defining the scope of “policy advice” (distinct from advocacy or academic argument), mastering template-based briefings, crafting speeches, and preparing press statements. Each chapter concludes with further simulations, and Routledge has generously provided free online exercises to sharpen practical skills.Second, Venneri shows how emerging technologies—particularly institutionalised generative AI and chatbots within the Commission—can automate routine tasks like data aggregation, document formatting and proofreading. Yet his team’s early experiments made clear that while AI can draft a first pass, only seasoned policy officers can ensure the output is calibrated to institutional mandates, political priorities and the interpersonal dynamics of high-level diplomacy. Far from obviating training, Venneri argues, AI simply refines the skill set: junior staff must master both the mechanics of policy writing and the strategic judgment that machines cannot replicate.

Finally, drawing on his tenure in DG NEAR, Venneri reflects on the unique challenges of EU enlargement as a “foreign policy with a Bible”—an accession process governed by an unchanging acquis communautaire yet driven by shifting political winds. He recounted how, after Croatia joined, his unit calmly used the ensuing lull to refine its methodology: blending quantitative indicators (statistical monitoring of judicial reforms, prosecutions and asset declarations) with qualitative peer reviews (bringing magistrates and prosecutors from member states to mentor counterparts in the Western Balkans). When Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine suddenly thrust enlargement back to the top of the agenda, the Commission was able to pivot rapidly—testament to the value of sustained, scholarly-minded institutional work.

In the lively Q&A that followed, participants probed the unintended consequences of rule-of-law conditionality (blocking Serbia’s €300 million allocation, for example) and the ways in which both over-rigid rules and under-enforced standards can fuel democratic backsliding. Venneri emphasised the EU’s growing use of performance-based rewards in its new IPA 3 regulation—more funds for those who deliver meaningful justice reforms, automatic safeguards for civil society funding—and cautioned that fully entrenched rule of law, while harder to achieve than mere electoral democracy, is essential to prevent the very abuses it seeks to curb.

Several students asked whether an outsider—without specific enlargement or EU background—could use Venneri’s book effectively. He assured them that every simulation is self-contained, requiring only the information provided; readers need not pause to research obscure terms or institutional intricacies. Others queried what to do when political leaders simply refuse to heed well-crafted advice. Venneri’s answer was emblematic: service in Brussels remains one of the few administrations globally that systematically demands and rewards clear thinking. Even when ministers push back—or machine-gun you with last-minute requests—the institutional stability of the Commission offers a reliable platform from which to influence outcomes over the long term.

In closing, Venneri urged scholars and students to “burn themselves in the lab” of policy internships, seizing every opportunity—European Commission stagiaire posts, WTO observer programmes, national diplomatic attachments—to test academic skills against real-world deadlines and hierarchies. Only by doing so, he argued, can the next generation of “briefing machines” combine analytical depth with the accessibility that turns research into impact.

by Yangyang Zhao (ESC Research Assistant)