Conference with David Lidington, Minister of State for Europe of the United Kingdom : "The Future of the European Union: Our shared Agenda"
Practical information
Meeting chaired by Thierry de Montbrial, President, Ifri.
Working language: English
Read two recent studies of the Ifri :
In Europe, not ruled by Europe: Tough love between Britain and the EU, Vivien PERTUSOT, Note de l'Ifri, March 2013
Discussions of a potential “Brexit”, the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, have sparked debate in Britain, and also across Europe, intensified by the UK veto of the “fiscal compact” at the European Council in December 2011. What sounded like the absurd pipedream of a few hard-core eurosceptics a couple of years ago has now become a genuine possibility. This study argues that this state of affairs does not originate from a deliberate strategy by the UK or its European partners. Rather they have set themselves on diverging paths, one leading to more integration, the other at best to the status quo - actually a form of relative disintegration - or to less integration. The more the gap widens, the less improbable a “Brexit” appears
Defence Reform in the United Kingdom: A Twenty-First Century Paradox, John LOUTH, Focus stratégique, n° 43, Ifri, march 2013
The context of budgetary constraint offered a strong incentive for the 2010 Coalition Government to improve its management of defence equipment. Before that, the previous Labour governments already focused on smart acquisition so that the procurement process could reach a trade-off between military performance, the R&D costs and the purchase value. Thus, several smart acquisition reforms aimed at importing private sector skills and behaviours into the defence public domain. By building its logic around public-private partnership (PPP), smart acquisition can be apprehended as an interlocking of three factors: organisation, the high level of process and body of knowledge, and the people who promoted and enacted its processes, behaviours and objectives. Due to organisational confusion, ineffective project management and unclear objectives, successive UK governments have failed to manage operational and financial risks, cost overruns and diseconomies.
Other events
Brussels, Germany, France and Italy Facing the Energy and Industrial Crises: Coordinated or Diverging Trajectories?
Amidst soaring defense spending, higher borrowing costs, erosion of energy intensive industries, renewed energy price hikes and possibly physical shortages, the European Union and its Member States are again struggling to stabilize the European economies. Governments are tempted by uncoordinated, short-term moves while in Brussels, there is a struggle between the “more of the same” and the “scrap it largely” approaches to the transition.
Geopolitical stakes of the New Moon race
As the United States, China, and India solidify their lunar ambitions, Europe is still seeking to define its stance: should it be a reliable partner or an autonomous strategic player? This conference will examine the stakes of this new race to the Moon and Europe’s interest in asserting itself as a lunar power through partnerships, industrial ambitions, and whether its participation in the new lunar race serves as a lever for strategic autonomy and internal cohesion, or an illustration of its dependence.