Talking Europe hosts Pascal Lamy, co-ordinator of the Jacques Delors institutes, and a distinguished former head of the World Trade Organization and former EU Trade Commissioner. We discuss great power competition in today's world; the EU’s influence when it comes to global trade and regulation; the critical importance of Africa to Europe; and climate adaptation in the light of Lamy’s role as a member of the Climate Overshoot Commission. On Brexit, an issue on which Lamy has been a prolific commentator, his advice to the British Labour party is: "keep the idea that you have divorced, for political reasons, but keep sleeping together with Europe, because that’s the way to address the economic problem."
"Europe has to exercise influence where it is united and it is united in economic and trade matters," Lamy asserts. "We have our own attitude vis-a-vis China, which is a political rivalry, but an economic interdependence. And most Europeans do not believe we should do with China what the US is doing, which is trying to isolate China. Isolating China is not the way to go. If you make China more autarkic, China will be more dangerous than what it is. So there are differences, and I think the EU has in a way to play its own game in this very complex world."
