Master Class with Heather Grabbe

About the speaker

Dr Heather Grabbe is Visiting Professor at the UCL European Institute. She is Senior Advisor at the Open Society Foundations, and was until recently Director of the Open Society European Policy Institute, their EU policy and advocacy branch. From 2004 to 2009 she was Senior Advisor to then European Commissioner for Enlargement Olli Rehn, responsible in his cabinet for the Balkans and Turkey. Before joining the commission, she was Deputy Director of the Centre for European Reform, the London-based think tank, where she published widely on EU enlargement and other European issues. Her writing has appeared in the Financial Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian, among others.

The session

The session will be composed of two parts.

First you will analyse, with Heather, the politics of the European Green Deal and how the policy implementation has been affected by the series of crises over COVID and Ukraine. You will cover how the EU oscillates between long-term policy frameworks and crises, affecting where decisions get taken and how political commitments are translated into policy.

You will then have a practice session on political messaging. You will try your hand at the drafting of a big speech like the State of the Union (Heather was involved in its preparation this year): do you choose to go more specific or more political? How do you structure your speech? In doing so, you will consider also how von der Leyen has taken a different approach from Barroso and Juncker.

Preparation

See invitation email. Please read the pieces by Heather on the topic to prepare for this session.

Read how to turn the European Green Deal into a global green deal:https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/international-system...