The Festival of Politics and Ideas – 2026 State of Europe

Olivier Blanchard is the Robert M. Solow Professor of Economics emeritus at MIT. He joined the Peterson Institute for International Economics as the first C. Fred Bergsten Senior Fellow since 2015. Olivier has previously served as an economic counselor and director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund.

Anne Bouverot is France’s Special Envoy for AI and as such led the organisation of the 2024 AI Action Summit in Paris. An engineer with a PhD in artificial intelligence from the École Normale Supérieure, she has held senior leadership roles at Orange and served as CEO of the GSMA, the global association of mobile operators. She later led Morpho (Safran Identity & Security) and co-founded the Abeona Foundation, promoting responsible AI. She currently chairs the Board of the École Normale Supérieure and plays a key role in shaping both French and European AI strategy.

Valdis Dombrovskis has been European Commissioner for Economy and Productivity, as well as Implementation and Simplification, since December 2024. Previously, he served as Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for An Economy that Works for People and Trade. From 2014 to 2019, he was Vice-President overseeing the Euro, Social Dialogue and Financial Stability. Prior to this, Valdis was Latvia’s longest-serving Prime Minister (2009–2014). Earlier in his career, Valdis served as Finance Minister, and as a member of both the Latvian and European Parliaments, and worked as Chief Economist at the Bank of Latvia.

Gert Jan Koopman is the Director-General for Enlargement and Eastern Neighbourhood. Prior to this, he served as the director-general of the European Commission’s budget department. In this role, he contributed to putting in place the European Union’s €800bn NextGenerationEU recovery plan, as well as the €18bn MFA+ for Ukraine. He has worked to enable its financing on the capital markets through a sovereign-style funding system. Having served the EU for nearly three decades, Koopman was previously in charge of state aid control at the Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition. His earlier assignments included senior management posts in the department for economic and financial affairs, the Commission’s economic service, as well as enterprise and industry, which supervises the smooth running of the single market. 

Andrius Kubilius is a Lithuanian politician currently serving as European Commissioner for Defence and Space. He previously served as Prime Minister of Lithuania, and as a Member of the European Parliament. Andrius is the former leader of the conservative political party Homeland Union (Lithuanian Christian Democrats).

Enrico Letta is Dean of the IE School of Politics, Economics, and Global Affairs, and President of the Jacques Delors Institute and AREL. He served as Prime Minister of Italy and has held multiple ministerial roles, including Minister for EU Affairs and Minister for Industry and Foreign Trade. Letta previously led the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po and chaired the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs. He was tasked by European institutions to draft a Report on the Future of the Single Market, reflecting his expertise in European policy and governance.

Mario Nava is the Director-General of DG EMPL of the EU Commission. Previously, he was the Director-General of DG REFORM and has held the role of Director and Head of Unit posts in the DG for Financial Services. He was also President of Italian Financial Market Authority. He teaches at Bocconi University and at Solvay Business School. Nava was notably awarded the title of Bocconi Alumnus of 2023.

Prior to his current assignment, Gerassimos Thomas served as the Greek deputy minister for environment and energy. He has held various positions at the European Commission, including as deputy director-general for energy, director of finance at the European Commission Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), head of cabinet and spokesperson for the economic and monetary affairs commissioner, and deputy spokesman for the Commission president. He is the former chair of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) Steering Board and previously sat on the board of directors of the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund.

Dr Valbona Zeneli currently holds the role of Senior Fellow for Peace, Security and Defence at Friends of Europe, and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States, with a dual affiliation at the Europe Center and the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s Transatlantic Security Initiative. From 2011 to 2023, she served as a Professor of National Security Studies and Chair of Strategic Engagements at the U.S. Department of Defense’s George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. She is also a visiting scholar for 2023-2024 at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University and a visiting fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre (RSC) at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Dr Zeneli specialises in transatlantic relations, strategic competition, NATO, globalisation, European Union enlargement and the Western Balkans. In 2023, she won the Inspiration for Women Award.