Europe: player and playground? - ERC Inaugural lecture by Luis Simón

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Brussels School of Governance are delighted to invite you to the ERC inaugural lecture by Professor Luis Simón, whose award-winning project explores one of the most pressing challenges in contemporary international politics: the implications of Sino-American competition for Europe and for debates in European strategic autonomy.

During this lecture, Professor Simón will present the innovative theory behind his research, which investigates how external powers like the United States and China seek to influence certain European policy choices and how coalitions of European actors or binders push back against such external pressures and try to “bind” Europe together. Ultimately, the theory is geared towards explaining whether and under which circumstances intra-European binding efforts are likely to prevail in the face of external pressures.  

Professor Simón argues that Europe is both a player and a playground in Sino-American competition, and seeks to explain under which circumstances one condition (player or playground) is more prevalent than the other. 

The project zooms in on the interaction between external “wedging” and internal “binding” in the context of three broad policy areas:

• trade and investment
• technology and infrastructure
• foreign and security policy.

By combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, this project sheds light on Europe’s strategic position in an increasingly turbulent geopolitical landscape. 

Professor Simón will be joined by his project team, including Prof. Daniel Fiott and Prof. Giulia Tercovich, who coordinate the economic statecraft and foreign policy legs of the project respectively.

Join us for this thought-provoking lecture, followed by a Q&A session and a celebratory reception.

The lecture will be held in English.

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