IIEA Talks IIEA

In her address to the IIEA, Dr Sabine Weyand presents how geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges are affecting international trade, and their implications for the EU’s trade policy. Furthermore, Dr Weyand assesses the role that trade plays in strengthening competitiveness of EU businesses and advancing the EU’s economic security interests, while supporting the EU’s green transition. This event is part of the Future Proofing Europe project, supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

About the Speaker:

Dr Sabine Weyand is Director-General for Trade at the European Commission. Prior to her current role, Dr Weyand was Deputy Chief Negotiator of the Commission Task Force for the Preparation and Conduct of the Negotiations with the United Kingdom under Article 50 of the TEU from October 2016 to May 2019. She was Director in the Secretariat-General of the Commission in charge of policy coordination on economic, social and environmental policies before joining DG Trade in 2016 as Deputy Director-General covering multilateral trade policy, trade relations with North America and European neighbourhood countries, as well as trade defence. She holds degrees from Freiburg University and the College of Europe and a PhD from Tübingen University.

As the United States faces into a number of consequential elections including the Presidential Election in 2024, along with elections to Congress as well as several gubernatorial elections, the shape of the political landscape in the United States both during the election campaigns and after the political dust has settled will be highly significant for the future of the country’s democracy. In her address to the IIEA, Vanessa Williamson, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, assesses the possible consequences of the 2024 elections for the resilience of the institutions which underpin the US’ democracy.

About the Speaker:

Vanessa Williamson is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, and a Senior Fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. She studies taxation, redistribution, democracy, and political participation. She is the author, with Theda Skocpol, of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.

In her speech, Andreja Metelko-Zgombić, State Secretary for Europe in the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia, focuses on Croatia’s perspective on the forthcoming EU enlargement process, the institutional changes required to prepare the EU for enlargement, and the range of reforms to be implemented by the Western Balkan countries before accession, including the resolution of historical disputes. She also addresses the proposal of a so-called confidence clause for the region in the accession treaties, which would prevent a newly joined Member State from blocking the accession of another candidate country. Finally, she provides an assessment, ten years on, of how both Croatia and the EU have benefitted from the 2013 enlargement.

About the Speaker:

Andreja Metelko-Zgombić is the State Secretary for Europe at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Croatia and holds a law degree. Prior to assuming this position in 2017, she held several prominent posts at the Ministry, including Chief Legal Adviser and Assistant Minister for European Law, International Law and Consular Affairs. Metelko-Zgombić is also the Senior Representative of the Republic of Croatia on the Standing Joint Committee on Succession Issues and the President of the Commission of the Government of the Republic of Croatia for Borders.

The EU has recently been placing greater weight on economic security as a distinct policy objective. How does this differ from past attempts to increase resilience and prevent crises? There is also a widespread view that increasing economic security should take the form of “de-risking” that preserves trade integrations as much as possible. But how do we determine exactly what needs de-risking? This lecture seeks to answer these questions and use the answers to the diagnose EU’s policy agenda on economic security. What has been achieved, where are the blind spots, and how can the chances of unintended consequences be minimised?

About the Speaker:

Jeromin Zettelmeyer has been Director of Bruegel since September 2022. Born in Madrid in 1964, Jeromin was previously a Deputy Director of the Strategy and Policy Review Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Prior to that, he was Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow (2019) and Senior Fellow (2016-19) at the Peterson Institute for International Economics; Director-General for Economic Policy at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (2014-16); Director of Research and Deputy Chief Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2008-2014); and an IMF staff member, where he worked in the Research, Western Hemisphere, and European II Departments (1994-2008).

According to Denis Staunton, a troubled economy at home and rising trade tensions abroad has seen China drop its aggressive Wolf Warrior diplomacy in favour of dialogue with the United States and a charm offensive towards the European Union. But can Beijing rescue the domestic economy from deflationary pressures without provoking a trade war over the export of goods such as electric vehicles and other green energy products? And how will the latest tightening of control in Hong Kong and continuing tensions over Taiwan and in the South China Sea affect China’s relations with the rest of the world? Irish Times journalist Denis Staunton, the only correspondent for an Irish news organisation in China, joins the IIEA from Beijing with an update.

About the Speaker:

Denis Staunton has been China Correspondent for The Irish Times based in Beijing since October 2022. He was London Editor from 2015 to 2022 and has previously been the newspaper’s correspondent in Washington, Brussels and Berlin and served as Foreign Editor and Deputy Editor.

This discussion at the IIEA touches on issues such as the ongoing update of the national energy and climate plans (NECPs), the Commission’s analysis and recommendation for the EU’s 2040 emissions reduction target, published on 6 February, and the first-ever European Climate Risk Assessment published on 11 March.

The event takes place as part of the European Commission’s ‘roadshow’ about the future of EU climate and energy policy, which aims to discuss the actions needed to reinforce competitiveness while staying the course on the net-zero transition and to strengthen societal preparedness for, and resilience to, the unavoidable impacts of climate change. 

Matthew Baldwin is Deputy Director-General at DG ENER, the European Commission’s energy department, where he leads the Energy Platform Task Force focused on ending EU dependence on Russian gas; and Jacob Werksman is Principal Adviser to the European Commission for Climate Action, specialising in international climate policy and environmental law, with extensive experience in multilateral negotiations and legal advisory roles.