Amicale

Dear friends,

We are delighted to invite you to “The Franco-German engine is back. Good or bad news for Europe?”, a videoconference on Zoom, in English, that will take place next Wednesday 3 June, from 7 to 7:30 pm.

On Monday 18 May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron called for a €500 billion COVID-19 recovery fund, to be raised through common EU debt and handed out as grants, and not loans. The proposal has been rightly hailed as a turning point for the European Union, because it reaffirms a commitment to solidarity by the EU’s two largest economies.

However, the Franco-German initiative also reaffirmed the role of intergovernmental practices, since it came out one week before the one of the European Commission, and the centrality of Paris and Berlin in providing the decisive impetus for the advancement of European integration.

In a Europe of 27 member states, does it still make sense to try to move things forward with a Franco-German bilateral initiative? Will the Franco-German agreement on common EU debt advance European integration or divide the Union further? In this context, what role should other member states play?

We will try to answer these questions with the help of:

• MEP François-Xavier Bellamy, head of the French EPP delegation in the European Parliament. He was the leader of Les Républicains’ list for the 2019 European elections. He is also deputy mayor of Versailles, responsible for employment, youth and higher education and he has been a philosophy teacher from 2009 to 2019;
• Sergio Fabbrini, Professor of Political Science and Dean of the Political Science Department at the LUISS University in Rome. He is also Visiting Professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Moreover, he collaborates as political affairs’ editorialist with the Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore. For his editorials, he was awarded the “Altiero Spinelli Prize 2017”.

To participate, you will have just to click on it on Wednesday 3 June, at 7 pm: ttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/81853576056