These Memos, addressed to the next Commission President and to the new European commissioners, are written by Bruegel Scholars and edited by Senior Research Fellow André Sapir and focus on key economic aspects of EU policy-making.

The new Commission will enter office at a challenging time for Europe, the EU and the Commission itself. The crisis has clearly exposed weaknesses in EU governance which need to be addressed and the memos make a number of concrete recommendations of relevance for major economic fields, as well as for the EU and Commission as a whole.

Addressing the next Commission President, André Sapir and Jean Pisani-Ferry propose that effective leadership will be necessary to give strategic direction to the Commission, "you [the president] should therefore be ready to fight for ideas and take risks" (JPF-AS). The Memos suggest that the EU will need to assert a position on commonly agreed rules, propose new solutions and, importantly, has an opportunity now to redefine the European narrative in the global arena.

Focusing on the most important economic questions at EU level, the Bruegel memos are intended to be strategic, outlining the state of affairs that will be met by the new Commission and the key challenges and priorities they will need to consider over the next five years.

About the authors

  • Jean Pisani-Ferry

    Jean Pisani-Ferry is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel, the European think tank, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute (Washington DC). He is also a professor of economics with Sciences Po (Paris).

    He sits on the supervisory board of the French Caisse des Dépôts and serves as non-executive chair of I4CE, the French institute for climate economics.

    Pisani-Ferry served from 2013 to 2016 as Commissioner-General of France Stratégie, the ideas lab of the French government. In 2017, he contributed to Emmanuel Macron’s presidential bid as the Director of programme and ideas of his campaign. He was from 2005 to 2013 the Founding Director of Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank that he had contributed to create. Beforehand, he was Executive President of the French PM’s Council of Economic Analysis (2001-2002), Senior Economic Adviser to the French Minister of Finance (1997-2000), and Director of CEPII, the French institute for international economics (1992-1997).

    Pisani-Ferry has taught at University Paris-Dauphine, École Polytechnique, École Centrale and the Free University of Brussels. His publications include numerous books and articles on economic policy and European policy issues. He has also been an active contributor to public debates with regular columns in Le Monde and for Project Syndicate.

  • Indhira Santos

    Indhira Santos was Research Fellow at Bruegel in June 2007 until July 2009, when she left to join the World Bank. She holds a PhD in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University with a specialisation in economic development and public economics.

    She was born and raised in the Dominican Republic where she studied economics as an undergraduate. She was Chief Researcher at the Economic research center of PUCMM University and worked for the Ministry of Finance. She has also worked for the central Bank of Turkey.

    Indhira's research interests are development microeconomics, public economics and organisational analysis.

    She coordinated Bruegel‘s project on the EU budget.

    She is fluent in Spanish and English.

  • André Sapir

    André Sapir, a Belgian citizen, is a Senior fellow at Bruegel. He is also University Professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Research fellow of the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research.

    Between 1990 and 2004, he worked for the European Commission, first as Economic Advisor to the Director-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, and then as Principal Economic Advisor to President Prodi, also heading his Economic Advisory Group. In 2004, he published 'An Agenda for a Growing Europe', a report to the president of the Commission by a group of independent experts that is known as the Sapir report. After leaving the Commission, he first served as External Member of President Barroso’s Economic Advisory Group and then as Member of the General Board (and Chair of the Advisory Scientific Committee) of the European Systemic Risk Board based at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt.

    André has written extensively on European integration, international trade and globalisation. He holds a PhD in economics from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he worked under the supervision of Béla Balassa. He was elected Member of the Academia Europaea and of the Royal Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.

  • Bruno van Pottelsberghe

    Bruno van Pottelsberghe joined Bruegel as a Senior Resident Fellow in November 2007. His research for Bruegel focuses on the effectiveness of several policy tools (R&D subsidies, R&D tax credits, intellectual property, public research and regulatory policies) aimed at stimulating innovation in Europe.

    He was the Chief Economist of the European Patent Office (EPO) from November 2005 to the end of 2007. Since 1999 he has been a professor at the Brussels‘ University (U.L.B.). As holder of the Solvay S.A. Chair of Innovation, he teaches courses related to the economics and management of innovation and intellectual property.

    He is also an adviser of the President and the Rector of the U.L.B. for technology transfer issues.

     

  • Nicolas Véron

    Nicolas Véron is a senior fellow at Bruegel and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. His research is mostly about financial systems and financial reform around the world, including global financial regulatory initiatives and current developments in the European Union. He was a cofounder of Bruegel starting in 2002, initially focusing on Bruegel’s design, operational start-up and development, then on policy research since 2006-07. He joined the Peterson Institute in 2009 and divides his time between the US and Europe.

    Véron has authored or co-authored numerous policy papers that include banking supervision and crisis management, financial reporting, the Eurozone policy framework, and economic nationalism. He has testified repeatedly in front of committees of the European Parliament, national parliaments in several EU member states, and US Congress. His publications also include Smoke & Mirrors, Inc.: Accounting for Capitalism, a book on accounting standards and practices (Cornell University Press, 2006), and several books in French.

    His prior experience includes working for Saint-Gobain in Berlin and Rothschilds in Paris in the early 1990s; economic aide to the Prefect in Lille (1995-97); corporate adviser to France’s Labour Minister (1997-2000); and chief financial officer of MultiMania / Lycos France, a publicly-listed online media company (2000-2002). From 2002 to 2009 he also operated an independent Paris-based financial consultancy.

    Véron is a board member of the derivatives arm (Global Trade Repository) of the Depositary Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), a financial infrastructure company that operates globally on a not-for-profit basis. A French citizen born in 1971, he has a quantitative background as a graduate from Ecole Polytechnique (1992) and Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (1995). He is trilingual in English, French and Spanish, and has fluent understanding of German and Italian.

    In September 2012, Bloomberg Markets included Véron in its second annual 50 Most Influential list with reference to his early advocacy of European banking union.

     

  • Jakob von Weizsäcker

    Jakob von Weizsäcker heads the department for economic policy and tourism at the Thuringian Economics Ministry in Erfurt and is a non-resident fellow at Bruegel where he was resident fellow form 2005 to 2010.

    He previously worked at the World Bank in Washington (2002-2005) where he was country economist for Tajikistan and the Federal Economics Ministry in Berlin (2001-2002) where he headed the office of a junior minister. Before that, he worked for Vesta, a venture capital firm, and held research positions at the Center for Economic Studies in Munich and CIRED in Paris.

  • Lars-Hendrik Röller

    Since July 1, 2011, Lars-Hendrik Röller has been appointed Director General of the Economic and Financial Policy Division of the German Federal Chancellery. Previous to becoming a member of Bruegel’s board Roller contributed to Bruegel’s research as a non-resident fellow, a position he held from 2006 to 2010.

    Lars-Hendrik Röller was appointed President of ESMT European School of Management and Technology on September 1, 2006. Since 2007 he has been a Research Professor at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin (WZB).

    In 2003 Lars-Hendrik Röller was appointed Europe’s first Chief Competition Economist of the European Commission, a position he held until 2006. He is the President of the German Economic Association and international Affiliate at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London. From 2005 - 2007 he was President of the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics (EARIE).

    Lars-Hendrik Röller is a Fellow of the European Economic Association and a member of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. In 2002 he was awarded the Gossen Prize (to honor a German economist whose work has gained international reputation).

    Lars-Hendrik Röller is on the editorial board of the several leading international journals and has published extensively in the area of competition, technology and market structure.  He has consulted international companies, governments and international organizations on issues of competition, strategy and regulation. He is co-founder and senior advisor of ESMT Competition Analysis, a consultancy working exclusively on economic assessments in the field of antitrust and regulatory.

    Lars-Hendrik Röller holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds an M.A. degree in Economics and an M.Sc. degree in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Pennsylvania as well as an B.S. in Computer Science from Texas A&M University.

  • Jürgen von Hagen

    Jürgen von Hagen, a German citizen, was Bruegel'‘s first Non-resident Senior Fellow. His widely acclaimed work on European integration addresses public finance and political economy issues.

    Jürgen is the Director of the Center for European Integration Studies in Bonn, a Research Fellow of the CEPR and a member of the Academic Advisory Council to the German Federal Minister of Economics and Labor.

    He has previously taught at Indiana University (1987-92) and the University of Mannheim (1992-96). His current interests include macroeconomics of European integration and the euro area and European public finance.

  • Zsolt Darvas

    Zsolt Darvas is a Senior Fellow at Bruegel and part-time Senior Research Fellow at the Corvinus University of Budapest. He joined Bruegel in 2008 as a Visiting Fellow, and became a Research Fellow in 2009 and a Senior Fellow in 2013.

    From 2005 to 2008, he was the Research Advisor of the Argenta Financial Research Group in Budapest. Before that, he worked at the research unit of the Central Bank of Hungary (1994-2005) where he served as Deputy Head.

    Zsolt holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Corvinus University of Budapest where he teaches courses in Econometrics but also at other institutions since 1994. His research interests include macroeconomics, international economics, central banking and time series analysis.

  • Reinhilde Veugelers

    Prof Dr. Reinhilde Veugelers is a full professor at KULeuven (BE) at the Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation.  She has been a Senior fellow at Bruegel since 2009.  She is also a CEPR Research Fellow, a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and of the Academia Europeana. From 2004-2008, she was on academic leave, as advisor at the European Commission (BEPA Bureau of European Policy Analysis).  She served on the ERC Scientific Council from 2012-2018 and on the RISE Expert Group advising the commissioner for Research.  She is a member of VARIO, the expert group advising the Flemish minister for Innovation. She is currently a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of the journal Science and a co-PI on the Science of Science Funding Initiative at NBER.

    With her research concentrated in the fields of industrial organisation, international economics and strategy, innovation and science, she has authored numerous well cited publications in leading international journals.  Specific recent topics include novelty in technology development,  international technology transfers through MNEs, global innovation value chains, young innovative companies, innovation for climate change,  industry science links and their impact on firm’s innovative productivity, evaluation of research & innovation policy,  explaining scientific productivity,  researchers’ international mobility,  novel scientific research.

    Websites:
    https://feb.kuleuven.be/reinhilde.veugelers
    https://bruegel.org/author/reinhilde-veugelers/

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