Madariaga - College of Europe Foundation

Article by Pierre Defraigne, published in La Libre Belgique on 3 March 2010. 

  Read the Article in French

Madariaga Speeches - January 2010

Talking at the first annual forum of nine leading Brussels think tanks, Pierre Defraigne addressed the Opening Plenary 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 Heads of State and Governments and the President of the Commission under President Van Rompuy's chairmanship 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, 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.

  Read the Paper in English

17 December, 2009

Pierre Defraigne, Executive Director of the Madariaga - College of Europe Foundation and member of the International Advisory Board for the Foundation for Effective Governance, took part in a public debate on the issue of decentralisation in the Ukraine on December 17, 2009 in Kiev.

Speaking at the public debate Defraigne stated that "decentralisation is not a priority for Ukraine as disparities among regions are not so dramatic, regions already trade more with the rest of the world than among themselves, and you still need good infrastructural linkages between East and West".