The world is being transformed in ways that will profoundly challenge human society. The ETUC and ETUI brings together globally-renowned experts to debate some of the most pressing issues confronting workers, unions and governments. In this framework, Pascal Lamy is invited to share his views on global scale challenges and their foreseeable impacts on countries’ social and economic organisation.

Globalisation, and particularly the free movement of capital, products, services and people, is constantly changing the allocation of jobs, on a global scale as well as throughout the European internal market. European union policies are shaping the frameworks in which EU member states and their actors operate. Economic integration at a more global scale, via trade agreements and the emergence of global value chains, is posing urgent questions about who are the winners and losers from globalisation. This session will aim to explore the interlinkages between global and European economic integration, on the one hand, and climate change on the other. In particular: what global strategies are needed to fight climate change; is globalisation a prerequisite to mitigating global warming, or is the opposite strategy of bottom-up initiatives more effective? How to reconcile the free movement of people, goods, capital and services with the containment of CO2 emissions?

This plenary also tries to explain the connection between globalisation and digitalisation. Are new technological developments increasing global economic interdependence, and is the development of new technology only possible at a global/European/ level? And, lastly, how has the free movement of people in Europe influenced demographic developments in the EU member states and what has globalisation meant for the movement of people at a global scale – for example, migration from rural to urban areas, from poorer regions to richer ones.

To shed the light on these issues, Pascal Lamy is accompanied by :

• Maria João Rodrigues, Vice Chair, Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament
• Zoltán Pogátsa, Professor, University of Western Hungary
• Gesine Schwan, President, Humboldt-Viadrina Governance Platform

For more information on Pascal Lamy’s intervention or the conference “The World(s) of Work in Transition”, we invite you to consult the three-days program, available on ETUC’s website or enclosed to this announcement.