Bruegel event recordings

This year’s EU-Japan conference, jointly organised by Bruegel and The Graduate Institute, Kobe University, will discuss Competition policy in the era of Artificial Intelligence. The conference will discuss the challenges brought by the economic impact of AI, with particular focus on the impact on competition as well as related policy challenges and ways to increase AI’s positive impact on the econ...

This event discussed the quality of public finance. There is evidence that improving the composition of public finance can improve growth and reduce equality. Would focusing on the quality of fiscal expenses and revenues rather than the budget deficit, be appropriate? Speakers: Chair: Maria Demertzis, Deputy Director Boris Cournede, Deputy Head of Division, Public Economics Division, OECD Sven Lan...

The provision of financial services is profoundly changing worldwide – so much so that many commentators are predicting the death of banking as we know it. The threat of banks’ extinction is not new; it’s been heralded many times in the past. For centuries, as banks have expanded and evolved, they have faced competition from other types of financial institutions. Despite high barriers to entry and...

This is a session that Bruegel organised at the World Trade Organization (WTO) Public Forum in Geneva. The participation of China in the WTO has been anything but smooth. Its self-proclaimed “socialist market economy” system has alienated its trading partners. Two diametrically opposite approaches (and a few variations of them) have been proposed to deal with the emerging problems. One is to deman...

On 11 September we were honoured to welcome S. Iswaran, Singapore’s Minister for Communications and Information and Minister-in-charge of Trade Relations who engaged in a conversation with Cecilia Malmström, European Commissioner for Trade. They discussed EU-Singapore relations in the context of the wider region and times of global upheaval. The EU and Singapore signed a Free Trade Agreement and a...

While the euro area has emerged from its deep economic crisis and interest rates are at historically low levels, multiple challenges remain. How complete is Europe’s monetary union? Do the available tools to prevent and correct fiscal, financial and macroeconomic imbalances reflect a reasonable compromise between first-best solutions and political reality? Is the euro area ready for a next recessi...

What’s the EU’s offer to Africa? No region is more vulnerable to current global challenges than Africa, with negative spill-overs for the EU. Simultaneously, Africa offers opportunities for investment and trade – a fact well recognised by other global actors. What can the EU’s new leadership offer Africa? And what does Africa expect from its neighbour? During this interactive session, we will disc...

America and China are engaged in an economic geopolitical struggle for supremacy. This is a threat to the multilateral system the European Union has relied on for nearly seven decades and to the EU’s separation of external economic relationships from geopolitics. What can the EU’s incoming leadership do to protect Europe’s economic autonomy?

The shift to digitalised services is triggering a profound transformation in the nature of work. Will increasing use of AI, machine learning, robots and big data lead to massive unemployment? How are non-traditional workers and the self-employed (such as drivers for ride-hailing services) to obtain health insurance and pensions? What role should public policy play going forward?

All too often trade is claimed to be the cause of, or a solution to, all the world’s problems. But these assertions are frequently based on outmoded concepts or plain misunderstandings, willful or otherwise. Reflecting on current developments, EU Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström speaks about the importance of evidence-based policymaking in international trade. Looking forward, her speech w...

When the last Commission took office in 2014, Europe was consumed by the eurozone crisis. Today, the incoming leadership must decide how to deal with a variety of issues. There is the US-China trade war, climate change & biodiversity, cohesion in the EU and the euro area, but also the role of the Commission as a political and/or technocratic institution to be considered.

Abstract Digital technologies are expected to be the drivers of growth, but evidence of significant productivity boosts is scant. Also, many people fear digitalisation will lead to more polarised economic structures. What corporate strategies and public policy support are needed to turn the potential of digital technologies into opportunities for sustainable growth of EU firms, and for addressing...

Abstract Putting a price on carbon has - for good economic reasons - become an undisputed policy proposal. But in reality, many economic activities (e.g., heating or transportation) are still not covered by such a price in many countries and existing carbon prices (e.g., in the EU Emission Trading System) are considered insufficient to drastically reduce emissions. In this session we want to discu...

Europe’s trade policy agenda for the next 5 years promises to be challenging. With the US and China engaged in an escalating trade war, the US threatening to impose additional tariffs on cars and China continuing to promote national champions, global trade and the world trading system are increasingly under severe threat, with direct consequences for the EU. How should and will the EU position its...

In this event and at the start of the new cycle of the European Institutions, Bruegel publishes a series of memos to the new generation of lawmakers. Our scholars lay out their suggestions for a fairer, greener and braver Europe.

Eurozone finance ministers have announced after their June meeting a newly-proposed Eurozone budget. One product of the negotiations is the Budgetary Instrument for Convergence and Competitiveness (BICC), designed to act as a tool for the budget and to be implemented by 2021. However, the ministers were unable to decide on details like the budget's funding and uses. Many have criticised the result...

Payments, in the EU as in the rest of the world, are increasingly being disrupted by new technologies, new business models, and new service providers. What challenges does this shift imply for EU financial services policy? This event featured a conversation concerning new developments of tech-enabled payment processes and their consequences on European financial service policy.

Bruegel was excited to host this event where speakers and experts from a variety of fields discussed the evolving party alignments in the European Union. The results of the May 2019 European Parliament election have highlighted the rise of liberal-centrist, green and nativist parties, and a relative decline of the traditionally dominant centre-left and centre-right, against a backdrop of political...

In recent times, China’s presence in Africa has steadily been on the rise. One of the key channels in which China is influencing Africa’s economy is investment, particularly through its Belt and Road Initiative. Europe has traditionally been the largest investor in Africa, and the rise of Chinese investments is challenging the status quo.

At this event we will looked at how small and medium-sized enterprises' (SMEs) financial inclusion is at the core of the economic diversification, growth, and job creation challenges many countries are facing. This event featured the presentation of Financial inclusion of SMEs in the Middle East and Central Asia, a recent paper by the IMF, which discusses the macroeconomic benefits that could stem...

Bruegel, the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and the European Center for Advanced Research in Economics and Statistics co-hosted this event about the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. The legacy of the crisis is stronger and better capitalized banks, as well as regulators and supervisors with increased clout who pay more attention to systemic risk. However, the crisis has also left us wi...

Bruegel was happy to host a discussion about the following issues: the completion of a Monetary Union in an evolving international community, a European monetary policy and financial system, and lessons learned through the past year in the European economy. This event featured the presentation of the Euro Yearbook 2018, where the authors set out to describe, analyse, and discuss the process leadin...

Major differences in economic resilience—an economy’s ability to withstand and adjust to shocks—persist across the euro area. This reflects in part the lack of independent nominal exchange rates, and the consequent greater reliance on other mechanisms to adjust to shocks. Greater risk sharing and integration within the euro area would help soften economic shocks, but countries’ own policies are vi...

During this event, European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström joined Bruegel Senior Fellow André Sapir for a conversation centered around trade policy. As one Commission reaches the end of its term, the EU finds itself entering a new chapter of policymaking and priorities. With the European elections, and the formation of a new administration, questions arise surrounding the agenda concerni...

The EU-LAC Economic Forum was established in 2016 as a high level gathering for in-depth research-based exchanges on economic issues between European, Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) policy makers and experts. This year’s edition featured three public sessions addressing strategic topics such as the future of regional integration, the 5G challenge and the EU-LAC collaboration, and the impact of...