Renaissance Hotel - Rue du Parnasse 19, 1050 Brüssel

Conference languages: EN, ES, FR, DE, IT, SR

Geopolitical tensions, critical dependencies, disrupted supply chains and increasingly intense international competition are prompting the EU to reconsider how it produces, trades and protects its economic interests. “Strategic autonomy” is becoming one of the organising principles of this new economic strategy. This emerging approach is changing the way the EU thinks about a range of policy areas, from critical raw materials, energy and technology to supply chains, industrial policy, trade and economic security.

This transformation has major implications for jobs and employment, yet it receives less attention among workers’ organisations than many traditional social policy issues. The Brussels Conference therefore aims to bring EZA members into a debate about the structural economic choices now being made at European level and their consequences for workers.

The conference will focus on three interconnected questions: which strategic dependencies Europe needs to reduce; what productive capacity Europe wants to develop and retain; and how Europe should compete in an increasingly fragmented global economy. Across all three, it will explore what Europe’s pursuit of greater strategic autonomy means for workers, employment and the role of workers’ organisations.