Madariaga - College of Europe Foundation

Madariaga Speeches, January 2010

Talking at the first annual forum of nine leading Brussels think tanks, Pierre Defraigne addressed the Opening Pleanry with his thoughts on the European Union after the Lisbon Treaty and its ability to deal with the global recession in his speech entitled 'Through an Intergovernmental Decade: All Heads on Deck!'. Defraigne explained that while the Lisbon Treaty strengthens the EU in many ways, it not only offers no further objectives, but embeds unanimity in key areas and puts huge pressure on the European Council. Pointing-out that the coming decade will be marked by greater intergovernmentalism, Defraigne also explained how only the collective leadership of the Heads of State and Governments and the President of the Commission under President Van Rompuy's charimanship can break the deadlock over the EU's economic governance and defence.

With the tone clearly set the forum split into four parallel working groups;

Workshop One - Leadership Lost? Developing the EU Climate Policy Model after Copenhagen;

Workshop Two - Dealing with Europe's Economic Challenges in a Post-Crisis and Post-Lisbon World;

Workshop Three - Stockholm Plus: Transforming Political Goals into Coherent Policies on Migration, Social Cohesion and Human Rights;

Workshop Four - Towards New Global Governance in a New Global Order: How can the EU Position Itself?.

Speaking in the second workshop co-organised by the Madariaga - College of Europe Foundation, the European Policy Centre and Bruegel, panelists and audience members addressed the two-fold challenge of short-term crisis management, and the longer-term need for structural re-orientation. Speaking on the EU2020 Strategy, the workshop agreed that Europe must return to financial, fiscal, monetary and structural normality but that quite what one considers 'normal' has to change. Concluding, the panelists surmised that the key question is ascertaining what Europe's role in a future global economic order characterised by the US' continued role as the engine of innovation and competitive pressure from rapidly emerging economies will be.

   Read Pierre Defraigne's Speech

   Read Agence Europe's Summary of the Forum

   Read the Forum's Press Release

Madariaga Paper, Vol. 3, No. 1, (Jan., 2010)

MARCO GIULI - Research Fellow, Madariaga - College of Europe Foundation

The aim of this paper is to assess whether decades of active promotion of tax competition by international and regional organisations played any role in the genesis of the global financial crisis. If income inequalities are among the structural causes of the crisis, tax policies that have contributed to increasing disparities over the last few decades cannot be neglected. This is especially the case in Europe, where competition to attract a larger tax base among governments is not extraneous to the persistence of specialisation within national borders and intra-EU trade imbalances leading to marcoeconomic destabilisation.

12 January 2010

With ratification of the new Treaty behind it, the European Union is under pressure to "return to the serious business of governing". At this critical juncture in the EU's development, nine leading Brussels-based think tanks (the Bertelsmann Stiftung, the Brussels European and Global Economic Laboratory (Bruegel), the Centre For European Studies (CEPS), the Egmont Institute, The European Policy Centre (EPC), Friends of Europe - Les Amis de l'Europe, the Institut français des relations internationales (IFRI), Madariaga - College of Europe Foundation and the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), in cooperation with Agence Europe have initiated an annual forum to deal with the Union's emerging politico-strategic agenda.

Thursday 3 - Friday 4 December 2009

This Conference was jointly organised at the Palais des Academies in connection with the Europalia festival by the Agence Wallone à l'Exportation et aux Investissements Etrangers (AWEX), la Cité Internationale and the Confucius Institute of Liège. With Pierre Defraigne, Executive Director of the Madariaga - College of Europe Foundation, Francoise Lemoine, Senior Economist at CEPII (Paris), Jean Christophe Defraigne, Lecturer at Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis - Centre for research in economics, Dr. Doris Fischer, Economist at the German Development Institute, Song Xinning, Senior Research Fellow at UNU-CRIS and Jean Monnet Professor at Renmin University of China, Men Jing, InBev-Baillet Latour Chair of European Union - China Relations, College of Europe and Senior Researcher of Chinese Foreign Policy, Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies and François Godement, Professor and Director, Asia Centre at Sciences Po and Senior fellow, European Council on Foreign Relations.