The Bertelsmann Stiftung High-Level Reflection Group brings together decisionmakers and experts to provide answers to the EU’s internal and external challenges based on the perspective of European public goods.

While the ongoing pandemic affects all European economies, we show that it is likely to cause much more economic damage in some member states than in others. Early fiscal crisis responses by EU governments do not reflect these...

EU member states must share the burden of the fiscal costs of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pandemic Solidarity Instrument delivers such burden sharing: The EU would borrow 440 billion euros in the market and would give it as grants...

The spread of the latest Coronavirus strain is not simply a health crisis. It has long taken on a geopolitical dimension. China and Russia are engaged in a ‘global battle of narratives’ over who is the most generous international...

Discussions about the societal consequences of algorithmic decision-making systems are omnipresent. A growing number of guidelines for the ethical development of so-called artificial intelligence (AI) have been put forward by...

The ECB has announced a 750-billion-euro purchase programme to fight the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But like all ECB Programmes in recent years, the new Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) will likely be...

One of the key issues in WTO reform is to enhance the efficiency and flexibility of the institution. As it is often hard to reach consensus among 164 member states, one way forward could be that a subset of members deepens...

On 4 February 2020, the Bertelsmann Stiftung, together with the King Baudouin Foundation and the Open Society Foundations, organised a DINNER DIALOGUE in Brussels. The topic that evening was the Conference on the Future of Europe...

Reforming WTO working practices can increase the efficiency of the organisation and raise its attractiveness to its members. This paper summarises the main recommendations from our other publications on reforming WTO working...

Industrial subsidies are a major source of trade tensions among WTO members. Cooperating internationally on how to deal with industrial subsidies, improve transparency and create common disciplines would defuse many of these...