Who you can listen to at the Warsaw European Conversation

Actors 2023-05-24

At Polityka Insight’s conference on Tuesday, politicians, diplomats, experts and journalists from Europe and the US will talk about their vision of Europe.

People

Thomas Bagger - Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to Poland. A professional diplomat with many years of experience (postings in Prague, Ankara, and Washington). In the summer, he will leave the German Embassy in Poland to become secretary of state at Germany’s MinFor. Between 2017 and 2022, he served as an advisor to the German president, while earlier he had been involved in the reform of the country’s foreign policy. In his public speeches, he defends liberal democracy, supports stronger integration of the European Union and calls for greater independence of the EU in the international arena.

Christian Danielsson - Secretary of State for EU Affairs at Sweden’s PMChan. He is a veteran of many EU institutions. Currently, he coordinates Sweden’s presidency in the Council of the EU, while previously he served as head of the European Commission Representation in Sweden. He has a comprehensive knowledge of topics related to the EU Neighborhood Policy. Between 2015 and 2020, he was Director-General of the European Commission Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations, where he dealt with the adoption of regulatory standards by candidate countries and counteracting the growing influence of Russia and China.

Mujtaba Rahman - Director of the European office of the consulting firm Eurasia Group. Seasoned analyst and commentator of European politics. In his analyses, he focuses on the EU's industrial policy, Brexit, and elections in member states. He learned about the inner workings of European bureaucracy while working at the EurCom and UK Treasury. In his articles, he challenges the assumption that after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the centre of gravity of European politics shifted to the East. He also argues that Angela Merkel was Europe’s last strong leader.

Camino Mortera-Martinez - Head of the Brussels office of the Centre for European Reform. While working for one of the most important European think tanks, she deals with the administration of justice, the rule of law and EU internal affairs, with a particular focus on migration, free movement of persons and data protection. Previously, she had cooperated with the European Commission on projects dealing with, among other things, criminal and civil law and counter-terrorism. She is a regular collaborator of both the European and US media, writing about the war in Ukraine and the EU's reaction to Russian aggression.

Nathalie Tocci - Head of the Rome Institute of International Affairs and adviser to the EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell and his predecessor Federica Mogherini, on whose behalf she developed the European global strategy. Previously, she had also been associated with the Centre for European Policy Studies and the College of Europe in Bruges. In Brussels, Tocci promoted the concept of the EU's strategic autonomy, or its ability to act independently in the conditions of dynamic geopolitical changes, such as the US-China rivalry or the war in Ukraine. In her latest book "Green and Global Europe", she argues that as a result of the energy transition, the EU has gained a new raison d'être.

Philipp Jäger - Policy Fellow at the Jacques Delors Centre. He specialises in European climate and economic policy. In his research, he focuses on the impact of the climate package Fit for 55 on the economic situation of the EU. He recently published a report in which he argued that the EU needs to turn its "Green Deal Industrial Plan" into a coherent strategy. Previously, he had also worked as an analyst for the EurCom, dealing mainly with the Recovery and Resilience Facility set up as the EU's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shahin Vallée - Senior fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP). In his research, he focuses on European public, economic and financial policy. Between 2015 and 2018, he was a personal advisor to George Soros and a senior economist at Soros Fund Management. He also served as an economic advisor to Emmanuel Macron and, before that, the President of the European Council Herman van Rompuy. In the last dozen or so years, he has been an important participant in the discussion on European economic policy and the eurozone. He is currently completing a PhD in political economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Vendeline von Bredow – a journalist who has been writing about Europe for The Economist for many years. She is currently a correspondent in Berlin and focuses on German and Austrian politics and the economy. In her articles, she pays particular attention to the so-called turning point in Germany's foreign policy (Zeitenwende), which was directly inspired by the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Previously, she had worked for the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels. She is working on a biography of Gianni Agnelli, a famous Italian industrialist.

Věra Jourová - EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency, the main promoter of the rule of law in the EU. She regularly criticises changes in the justice system in Poland and the situation of the media in Hungary. Jourová believes that the payment of EU funds should depend on whether a particular member state complies with the rule of law – she was one of the five commissioners who protested in June 2022 against the EurCom's decision to approve Poland’s national recovery plan. She is currently working on the Defence of Democracy Package - a legislative effort aimed at strengthening participation in democratic life and protecting civic space.

Jan Olechowski contributed to this analysis.

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Maria Wiśniewska

Analyst for European Affairs

m.wisniewska@politykainsight.pl

EU summit: Member States launch discussion on financing joint defence initiatives

State of play

Leaders approved appointments to top posts. At the EU summit that ended on Thursday night, they nominated Ursula von der Leyen for a second term as head of EurCom, former Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa as head of EurCou and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as head of EU diplomacy. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni abstained from voting for von der Leyen and voted against Costa and Kallas. This means that Meloni is preparing for tough negotiations and may demand a high political price in return for his party's support for von der Leyen in her approval in the EurParl. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán voted against von der Leyen and abstained on Kallas.

They adopted the Union's strategic agenda for 2024-2029. Over the next five years, the Union's goals include a successful digital and green transformation by "pragmatically" pursuing the path to climate neutrality by 2050. Another objective is to strengthen the EU's security and defence capabilities.

Von der Leyen spoke of EUR 500 billion for defence over a decade. This was the EurCom estimate of needed EU investment presented by its head at the EurCou meeting. Poland and France were among the countries that expected the EurCom to present possible options for financing defence investments before the summit, such as EU financing of common expenditure from a common borrowing. This idea was strongly opposed by Germany and the Netherlands, among others. In the end, von der Leyen decided to postpone the debate until after the constitution of the new EurCom, i.e. in the autumn. And the summit - after von der Leyen's oral presentation - only launched a preliminary debate on possible joint financing of defence projects.

Poland has submitted two defence projects. These might be co-financed by EU funds. On the eve of the summit, Poland and Greece presented in writing a detailed concept for an air defence system for the Union (Shield and Spear), which Prime Ministers Donald Tusk and Kyriakos Mitostakis had put forward - in a more general form - in May. In addition, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia presented the idea of jointly strengthening the defence infrastructure along the EU's borders with Russia and Belarus. Poland is pushing for the EU to go significantly beyond its current plans to support the defence industry with EU funds and agree to spend money on defence projects similar to the two proposals. But EU states are far from a consensus on the issue.

Zelensky signed a security agreement with the Union. The document, signed by President Volodymyr Zelensky in Brussels, commits all member states and the EU as a whole to "help Ukraine defend itself, resist efforts to destabilise it and deter future acts of aggression". The document recalls the EUR 5 billion the EU intends to allocate for military aid and training in 2024 (in addition to bilateral aid from EU countries to Kyiv). It says that "further comparable annual increases could be envisaged until 2027, based on Ukrainian needs" i.e. it could amount to up to EUR 20 billion. Ukraine's agreement with the EU comes on top of the bilateral security "guarantees" Ukraine has already signed with a dozen countries (including the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy). As Prime Minister Donald Tusk confirmed in Brussels, talks are also underway between Ukraine and Poland on the text of mutual commitments on security issues.

KO wins elections to the European Parliament

KO received 38.2 per cent of the vote and PiS 33.9 per cent, according to an exit poll by IPSOS. Konfederacja came in third with 11.9 per cent, followed by Trzecia Droga with 8.2 per cent, Lewica with 6.6 per cent, Bezpartyjni Samorządowcy with 0.8 per cent and Polexit with 0.3 per cent. According to the exit poll, KO gained 21 seats, PiS 19, Konfederacja 6, Trzecia Droga 4 and Lewica gained 3. The turnout was 39.7 per cent.

According to the European Parliament's first projection, the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), which includes, among others, PO and PSL, will remain the largest force with 181 MEPs in the 720-seat Parliament. The centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D), whose members include the Polish Lewica, should have 135 seats, whereas the liberal Renew Europe club (including Polska 2050) will have 82 seats. This gives a total of 398 seats to the coalition of these three centrist factions (EPP, S&D and Renew Europe) on which the European Commission under Ursula von der Leyen has relied on so far. The Green faction wins 53 seats according to the same projection, the European Conservatives and Reformists faction (including PiS) 71 seats and the radical right-wing Identity and Democracy 62 seats.

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