Mara Bălașa

Mara Bălașa is an Ax:son Johnson Institute for Statecraft and Diplomacy Pre-doctoral Fellow at the Center for Statecraft and Strategic Communication, Stockholm School of Economics, a visiting researcher at the Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, and a Senior Associate with the Clean Economy Team of the Energy Policy Group think tank. She studies whether Europe’s geopolitical ambitions for a competitive, low-carbon industry can survive translation into bankable investments, tracing the electricity price from EU statecraft down to the balance sheets of steel, ammonia, and methanol producers. Her findings bear on a central question of the European green transition: how to design markets, instruments, and infrastructure so that strategic ambitions become investable projects.

Mara’s previous work experience includes roles at the European Central Bank, the World Bank Group, the Permanent Representation of Romania to the European Union and the Romanian Ministry of Economy.