Geopolitical Economist Roundtable

📅 2 July 2025

🕔 12:30-14:00, registration and welcome coffee at 12.00

📍 European Parliament

🥗 Lunch provided

Context

The European Union is navigating a critical juncture as it seeks to reinforce its economic resilience, maintain global competitiveness, and respond to evolving geopolitical challenges. The European Commission’s Savings and Investments Union Communication and the EU’s Competitiveness Compass set a direction to deepen Europe’s capital markets by removing internal barriers, fostering cross-border investment, and better mobilizing domestic savings toward strategic priorities. Recent analysis from the IMF and the ECB also underscores how existing market fragmentation constrains the EU’s ability to fully channel its considerable savings into productive investments, limiting growth and resilience at a time of increasing global uncertainty.

This agenda is taking place in a context of shifting global trade dynamics and increasing geoeconomic fragmentation, placing new pressures on Europe’s economic model. Recent global tensions, including those affecting transatlantic relations and engagement with key partners such as China and emerging economies, highlight the need for a coherent and forward-looking economic strategy.

Meanwhile, heightened security demands, driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine and broader regional uncertainties, are prompting important conversations around how Europe can sustainably finance defense and strategic capabilities without undermining fiscal sustainability or long-term growth potential.

This roundtable brings together EU policymakers, economists, and financial sector representatives to exchange on Europe’s economic future and the actions that the EU needs to take, both internally and externally, to build more competitive, cohesive, and resilient European capital markets.

Points for discussion

• Exploring how the EU can implement concrete measures to action the Savings and Investments Union strategy
• Discussing how the EU can sustain global competitiveness through deeper integration, smarter investment, and sound financial governance, while maintaining its regulatory approach
• Identifying policy tools to enhance EU economic resilience in the face of external shocks and geoeconomic fragmentation
• Examining how to balance strategic investments - including in defence and energy - with the EU’s broader fiscal and growth objectives

Program and guests

Speakers:

• Tsvetelina Penkova, Member of the European Parliament and Member of EPFSF Steering Committee
• Lasse Boehm, Head of the Economic Governance and EMU Scrutiny Unit (EGOV) at the European Parliament
• Boris Kisselevsky, Head of European Central Bank Representation in Brussels
• Reinhard Felke, Director for policy coordination, economic forecasts and communication, DG ECFIN, European Commission
• Simona Delle Chiaie, Chief Euro Area Economist at Bloomberg
• Paola Monperrus-Veroni, Chief Economist Europe at Crédit Agricole
• Simona Paravani-Mellinghoff, Global Chief Investment Officer at BlackRock
• Moderated by Wim Mijs, Chair of EPFSF Board of Directors and CEO of European Banking Federation

Don't miss this opportunity. We look forward to welcoming you!

This event is reserved for EPFSF members and EU institutions staff. For more information and registration, contact us at secretariat@epfsf.org