Geneva Center for Security Policy: The Impact of the EU on World Trade ( and a wider security perspective)

 Invitation issued by Ambassador Christian Dussey, Director, GCSP

The session was held under the Chatham House Rule. Nothing published.

My presentation developed under 5 main points:

1/ The founding fathers of the European Integration process were inspired from the beginning by profoundly political objectives (including make further wars in Europe impossible) and they used economic integration as a tool and mean for the purpose. The link between, on the one hand, trade and economy and, on the other hand, politics and security, remains special in the current EU compared with other big trade and economic world players.

2/ Trade policy is more and more de facto  interlinked with other policies (exchange rates, environment, climate change, investment, energy etc) and more and more fundamental values are part of the trade policy making (GSP+, Pakistan waiver for humanitarian reasons, cooperation agreements and HR, labour law and Democracy related provisions, Compass with Bangladesh in 2013 etc)

3/to be completed

4/to be completed

5/ The role of EU on the world stage for the coming years will depend enormously upon its ability to overcome current economic difficulties and particularly the challenges relating to the Euro. The study of international and intra-EU trade flows data, provide interesting lessons on the evolution of the relative competitiveness of the EU and the Eurozone in the world and also the internal to the Eurozone imbalances. Currents trends are encouraging.

Very active participation of the audience, a lot of questions, interesting exchange of views