Oana Lungescu (born 29 June 1958) is a Romanian journalist with philological education (English and Spanish). Between 2010 and September 2023 she has been the principal NATO spokesperson.[1] In 2024 she joined the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK defence and security think tank.[2]
Born in Bucharest, she graduated in 1981 from the Faculty of Philology of the University of Bucharest, the English-Spanish section. Between 1981 and 1983 she worked as an English teacher in the town of Bușteni.[3] In 1983 she refused to cooperate with the Communist secret police, the Securitate.[4] The Securitate prepared an informational tracking file of Lungescu giving her the code name Lorena.[5]
Her mother, originally from Cluj, had settled in 1981 as a physician in West Germany. Oana Lungescu requested in 1983 the granting of a passport for visiting her mother, only to be refused by the authorities. The Securitate tried to force her collaboration through blackmail with a passport and medication for her father, a lawyer, who was seriously ill. After her father died in 1985, she was allowed to live in West Germany, where she obtained German citizenship.[6]
Between 1985 (before the 1989 fall of Communism in Eastern Europe) and 1992, she worked as a reporter for the Romanian section of the BBC, by 1996 becoming editor and auxiliary of BBC's Romanian section, under the editorial name of "Ana Maria Bota".[7] In 1997, she moved to the BBC World Service, where she worked as a correspondent in Brussels and Berlin until 2010, when NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen named her as the new spokesperson, succeeding James Appathurai.[8] She was the first woman, first journalist, first person born in the former Soviet block, and became the longest-serving person in this position.[1] [2] As of 2024, Lungescu is distinguished fellow at a UK defence and security think tank, RUSI - the Royal United Services Institute.[2]