The EU in a World of Economic Warfare: Trade, Geopolitics, and the Battle for Economic Sovereignty
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The international trading system has become a primary theatre of geopolitical competition. Tariffs, sanctions, and technology controls have replaced dialogue as the default instruments of economic relations.
And the EU finds itself caught between two simultaneous pressures: a more assertive China competing aggressively in key industrial sectors, and a United States that can no longer be taken for granted as a partner committed to open, rules-based trade. As the transatlantic relationship is tested and the WTO increasingly sidelined, the EU faces a defining question: can it defend its economic interests and pursue strategic autonomy without abandoning the multilateral order it has long championed - and without being forced to choose sides?
10h00 | Discussion
Elvire Fabry, Director of the Trade and Economic Security programme at the Jacques Delors Institute, Paris
Alicia García-Herrero, Senior Fellow at Bruegel, Brussels
Maaike Heijmans, Programme Lead Geopolitics of Technology and Digitalisation and Research Fellow at Clingendael, The Hague
Mario Holzner, Executive Director at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (wiiw), Vienna
Moderation: Dietmar Schweisgut, Secretary General of the Austro-French Centre for Rapprochement in Europe
11h30 | End of the discussion
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