Egmont – EPC Webinar
Hosted on Egmont Zoom, Wednesday 10 November 2021, 11h00-12h30
Nearly a year has passed since the transition period following the UK’s departure from the EU came to an end. Brexit is done and over with – or so it would seem. Yet the shape of the EU-UK relationship is still far from clear. While the Northern Ireland protocol has been dominating the headlines, the precise modalities of reciprocal market access have not been fully fleshed out. While the UK may now possess greater decision-making autonomy in certain fields, the areas in which the UK seeks to maintain a close relationship with the EU remain riddled by uncertainty. Is the endgame of Brexit now already coming into view? What can be learned from the time that has now passed? And what can we expect from the future relationship, with a new German coalition government coming into office and France taking over the Council Presidency? Do the post-pandemic UK and EU still have radically different views of the future relationship, or does a cordial consensus to work together pragmatically begin to emerge?
Programme
11h00 Introductory remarks
by Prof. Dr. Alexander Mattelaer (Egmont & Brussels School of Governance)
11h05 Impulse statements on the Brexit state of play
by Sir Jonathan Faull (Egmont & Brunswick Group) and Dr. Fabian Zuleeg (EPC)
11h30 Impulse statements on the future outlook for EU-UK relations
by Georgina Wright (Institut Montaigne) and Timon Salomonson (EEAS)
About the speakers
Sir Jonathan Faull (KCMG) is Senior Associate Fellow at Egmont, and has been Chair of European Public Affairs at the Brunswick Group since 2017. He previously spent 38 years at the European Commission in a variety of functions, most recently serving as Director General of the Task Force on the British referendum on membership of the EU (2015-2016). He is a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe and at King’s College London, and a member of the boards of the Jacques Delors Institute and the Centre for European Reform.
Timon Bo Salomonson is currently head of the UK division at the European External Action Service. Before joining the EEAS, he served as the Brexit delegate in the Belgian Permanent representation to the EU. As a Belgian diplomat he has been posted to The Hague, Vienna and Geneva. He studied law and philosophy at the University of Leuven, and international politics at the University of Antwerp.
Georgina Wright is Senior Fellow and Director of Institut Montaigne’s Europe Program. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, associate of the Institute for Government in London and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Britain and Europe at the University of Surrey. Before joining Institut Montaigne, she was senior researcher at the Institute for Government (2019-2020) and research associate at Chatham House (2014-2018).
Dr Fabian Zuleeg is Chief Executive and Chief Economist of the European Policy Centre. He holds a PhD on the political economy of EU accession from Edinburgh University and has a long-standing interest in the UK-EU relationship. He is currently a Member of the Executive Board of Transparency International EU, Honorary Fellow at the Europa Institute of the University of Edinburgh and Honorary Professor at Heriot Watt University, as well as being on the Advisory Board for the NI/IRL Brexit Witness project.
Please note that this Egmont-EPC webinar is held on the record and a videorecording can be made available in the public domain.
Watch the replay of the webinar