Project description Jean Monnet Chair
The Jean Monnet Chair will focus on EU policy changes in reaction to an increasingly confrontational international environment characterized by geopolitical and geo-economic strategies of main trading partners and strategic competition between great powers, notably China and the US. The research, teaching and outreach activities will focus on the EU’s economic statecraft in terms of external trade and investment policies and internal regulation to face these geopolitical challenges. They comprise the EU’s changing perceptions of its geopolitical environment, its trade strategy of open strategic autonomy, reforms of existing instruments to foster its strategic autonomy and economic sovereignty, and the development of new instruments in fields such as trade defence, FDI screening, export controls, internal regulations to counter distortions of competition and coercive geo-economic strategies of important trading partners.
The project pursues three key goals: 1) to increase students’ awareness of the EU’ trade and investment relations in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment by developing innovative teaching content for new seminars and by feeding project content into existing seminars; 2) to provide inputs into the expert community’s debate on EU foreign economic policies and the reform of its instruments; 3) to reach out to civil society, policy-makers, stakeholders and media representatives through appropriate dissemination tools, such as podcasts, blogs, briefing notes, guest lectures, panel debates, and guides to web resources.