The challenges facing Europe are multitude, but so are their solutions. From climate change to COVID-19, we believe that we can only tackle them together - and that we need to tackle them today. With this engaging panel, we bring together experts form policymaking, -advising, and -researching to do exactly that.

Join us as Dr Heather Grabbe, Director of the Open Society European Policy Institute, Brando Benifei, Head of the Delegation of the Italian S&D MEPs, Prof Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford, Gijs de Vries, Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE and former Dutch State Secretary of the Interior, Prof Olivier Costa, Director of the Department of European Political and Governance Studies at the College of Europe, and Sarah Chander, co-founder of Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice, discuss what needs to be done today for a more open, just, and sustainable EUrope tomorrow.

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📌 Brando Benifei, European Federalist, is from La Spezia, Italy, and is the Head of Delegation of the Italian S&D MEPs. His main areas of work are Internal Market and Consumers Protection, Employment and Social Affairs, and Constitutional Affairs. He is rapporteur for the Single Market Program and shadow rapporteur for the European Social Fund Plus. He is active on youth policies, digitalisation and rights of persons with disabilities. In the previous term, he was responsible for the European Solidarity Corps, for the Post-Arab Spring in the MENA region and for key reports on the social inclusion and integration of refugees into the EU labour market, as well as youth employment policy such as the Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiative. He was also co-chair of the Youth Intergroup and vice-chair of the Disability Intergroup. In 2018, he received the MEP Award for his work on Employment and Social Affairs issues, for his work on youth unemployment. In 2016, Forbes included him in its annual 30 under-30 most influential in EU Politics list.

📌 Dr Heather Grabbe is director of the Open Society European Policy Institute, the EU policy arm of Open Society Foundations, which works to ensure that open society values are at the heart of EU policies and actions, both inside and outside its borders. Grabbe is a political scientist and advocate for democratic pluralism and open societies. She was ranked highly among “the women who shape Brussels” by Politico, gave a TED talk on the importance of critical thinking and mindful engagement with post-truth politics, and has written recently on how climate change and technology are affecting the quality of democracy and economic and social justice.

From 2004 to 2009 she was senior advisor to then European Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, responsible for EU policy on the Balkans and Turkey. Previously, she was deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, where she wrote extensively on EU external policies and enlargement. She also conducted academic research at the European University Institute (Florence), Chatham House (London), Oxford and Birmingham universities, and taught at the London School of Economics.

📌 Prof Olivier Costa is Research Professor at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), CEVIPOF, Sciences Po (Paris, France). He is also Director at the European Political and Governance Studies Department of the College of Europe (Bruges, Belgium). He is Executive Editor of the Journal of European Integration. His priorities in research include EU institutions and policies, European Parliament, French Parliament, comparative legislative politics and compared regionalism.

📌 Prof Kalypso Nicolaïdis is Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a governing body fellow at St Antony’s College at the European Studies Centre. She teaches the theories and practice of international relations, European integration, international political economy, negotiation and game theory, and research methods. Previously Professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, she has worked with numerous EU institutions, including as a member of the European Council’s reflection group on the future of Europe chaired by Felipe González (2008–10). She is currently chair of the Oxford Working Group on Brexit as well as the Global PeaceTech programme. Her research interests revolve around internal and external aspects of European integration as well as global affairs, theatres of recognition, democratic theory, solidarity and empathy, global governance and international trade, sustainable integration, post-colonialism, myth and politics and the import of new technologies on international relations. Her latest book is: Exodus, Reckoning, Sacrifice: Three Meanings of Brexit (2019).

📌 Gijs de Vries is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the European Institute of the LSE. He was State Secretary of the Interior in the government of The Netherlands. He was the representative of the Dutch government in the Convention on the Future of the European Union. He is a former Member of Parliament and a former Vice-President of the Dutch Court of Audit. From 2004-2007 he served as the European Union’s first Counter-Terrorism Coordinator. At the invitation of the European Commission he went on to chair the European Security Research and Innovation Forum (ESRIF). From 2010-2013 he was a member of the European Union’s Court of Auditors. From 1994-1998 he was the Leader of the Liberal and Democratic Group in the European Parliament.

Gijs de Vries was a co-founder of the European Council on Foreign Relations and of the Transatlantic Policy Network. He was chairman of the European Integration and Citizen Programme at the European Policy Centre (Brussels) and a member of the Advisory Council of the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam).

📌 Sarah Chander is a Co-founder of Equinox Initiative for Racial Justice and Senior Policy Adviser at European Digital Rights, (EDRi). She leads EDRi’s policy work on artificial intelligence and connecting digital rights with wider movements for equality and justice.