European Union

Tara Varma is the managing director of GMF’s Strategic Foresight program and director of the organization’s Paris office. Prior to joining GMF, she was a visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. 

Her research focus includes French and European foreign policy priorities. In particular, she works on European strategic autonomy, European defense and security priorities, and transatlantic developments in Europe. She is also interested in the nexus between domestic and foreign policies inside the EU, and in Indo-Pacific security and the role Europeans could play in it. 

Previously, Varma was a senior policy fellow and the head of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, where she followed French foreign policy and European and Asian security developments. In 2022, she was part of the working group on the French European Council presidency set up by the French Foreign Ministry. In November 2023, Varma was honored as a Knight of the National Order of Merit of France for her contribution to the resulting report, A Europe for Today and Tomorrow: Sovereignty, Solidarity, Shared Identity.   

Varma has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Le Monde, and other outlets, appearing regularly on France24. She is a frequent guest on several podcast shows, including “Le Collimateur” and the Center for a New American Security’s “Brussels Sprouts” podcast. 

Varma has a master’s degree in international relations from Sciences Po Lille and a master’s degree in international politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.