Institut Veblen / Veblen Institute

Toward a Sustainable European Industrial Policy: Tools and Levers

Madeleine Péron — 2026-03-18T15:07:15Z

Europe does not have to choose between competitiveness and the environment. It must build its competitiveness on the ecological transition, or it will fail on both fronts.

One year after the Draghi report, the European Commission is embarking on a dangerous path: abandoning the environmental objectives of the Green Deal in the name of short-term competitiveness, while failing to guarantee the Union's strategic autonomy or economic security.

Under the guise of administrative simplification, what is actually taking place is genuine deregulation. The Commission's first measures reflect trade-offs that are systematically unfavourable to the climate, the environment and social justice. The result: Europe is moving no closer to any of its objectives — neither ecological nor economic. The Commission is offering a false choice between competitiveness, economic security and the environment, when an integrated approach is indispensable.

The Draghi report itself called for greater coherence between the Union's economic, trade and financial policies. Yet the European Commission has not yet translated this call into action. Tools already exist to reconcile ecological transition and competitiveness. The current industrial momentum opens a window of opportunity: the European Union is relaxing its competition doctrine and equipping itself with the means for a more strategic economic policy.

This note examines the real coherence and effectiveness of the proposed policy mix, and sets out proposals to enable the European Union to reconcile its climate, environmental and competitiveness objectives.

Six levers for a sustainable European Industrial Policy

1- Steer industrial policy by integrating economic, environmental and social dimensions
2- Make public support conditional on environmental and social criteria
3- Cooperate on European industrial projects aligned with the transition, such as the small electric vehicle
4- Green public procurement to drive industrial transformation
5- Make full use of the new trade defence tools and ambitiously implement all the instruments of the Green Shield (strengthened requirements for access to the EU market)
6- Increase and strategically direct public and private investment

Joint civil society and cities letter on the revision of the CO2 emission standards for cars and vans

2026-03-17T10:13:15Z

Ahead of a meeting of EU Environment Ministers, 34 organisations call for the ambition of the 2030 and 2035 targets to be maintained.

Dear Climate and Environment Ministers of the European Union,

Cars are responsible for 14% of all greenhouse gas emissions in Europe and air pollution is still linked to over 182,000 deaths in the EU per year, according to the European Environment Agency with a strong exposure of the EU population in urban areas. The solution to both climate damage and toxic air pollution is already available and is soon to become the go-to option for consumers to reduce their mobility costs. Light-duty electric vehicles offer the opportunity to cost-effectively replace the polluting internal combustion engine (ICE) and usher in a new era of zero-emission mobility.

For more than a decade, EU CO₂ standards for cars have been the single most effective policy instrument to reduce road transport emissions, improve air quality and drive the transformation of Europe's automotive industry. They are not only a climate tool. They have become the backbone of Europe's industrial strategy for clean mobility, giving direction to investments in electric vehicles, batteries, charging infrastructure and European manufacturing capacity. The clarity and predictability of the targets have triggered unprecedented industrial investments and positioned Europe on the path toward zero-emission mobility. These investments are now trickling down with a renewed perspective for consumers to find affordable electric vehicles, at a time where high prices pushed many of them away from the new car market.

However, despite their proven effectiveness, the EU CO₂ standards for cars and vans have been subjected to sustained pressure from some industries. In December 2025, the European Commission reopened the regulation and proposed a revision that would significantly lower its ambition through the removal of a phase out date and the introduction of multiple new flexibilities. This shift risks weakening one of the EU's most effective climate instruments, jeopardising industrial, societal, and environmental progress made to achieve the EU's competitiveness and resilience objectives. At a time of escalating climate and energy crises, weakening the car CO₂ standards would be a serious mistake that undermines Europe's strategic autonomy and prolongs its dependence on imported fossil fuels.

Overall, flexibilities will lead manufacturers to postpone action, leading to higher emissions and undermining investment certainty in batteries, charging networks and across the e-mobility value chain. The proposed flexibilities open the door to biofuels and e-fuels which have no role in decarbonising cars and vans and should be excluded from the regulation. Averaging compliance over 2030-2032 would, in practice, slow down the electric vehicles market at the moment when it needs to scale up rapidly.

We therefore call on national governments to:

Reject any weakening of the 2030 target ambition to secure rapid mass adoption of electric cars,

Support the end of the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2035 to ensure that the regulation remains aligned with the EU's climate and industrial objectives.

Yours sincerely,

T&E, BEUC, Eurocities, Polis, ERS, EEB, International Federation of Pedestrians, VCÖ – Mobilität mit Zukunft (Austria), Bond Beter Leefmilieu (Belgium), Les Chercheurs d'Air (Belgium), Veblen Institute for Economic Reforms (France), Réseau Action Climat (France), Fondation pour la Nature et l'Homme (France), Canopea (France), Germanwatch (Germany), Nabu (Germany), DUH (Germany), Kyoto Club (Italy), Legambiente (Italy), Nuove Ri-Generazioni (Italy), Greenpeace Italia (Italy), Cittadini per l'aria onlus (Italy), Adiconsum (Italy), Forum Disuguaglianze e Diversità (Italy), Natuur & Milieu (Netherlands), Parent in the City Foundation (Poland), Zero (Portugal), Focus Association for sustainable development (Slovenia), Coalition for sustainable transport policies (KTPP) (Slovenia), Ecologistas en Acción (Spain), Fundación Ecología y Desarrollo (ECODES) (Spain), VCS Verkehrs-Club der Schwei (Suisse), LIVE + BREATHE (UK), Mums for Lungs (UK).

US banks set to face lower capital requirements: a further step towards deregulation

Wojtek Kalinowski — 2026-03-13T10:45:10Z

On March 12, 2026, Michelle W. Bowman, the Federal Reserve's Vice Chair for Supervision, announced proposals to overhaul capital requirements for large US banks. In practice, this means a reduction in capital requirements for the eight largest US banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs.

This decision is likely to be seized upon by those in Europe already pushing for lighter capital requirements in the name of international competitiveness. The EU Council is already calling for a “simplification” of financial services regulation, including the prudential framework. In February 2026, German and French Finance Ministers Lars Klingbeil and Roland Lescure wrote to Commissioner Albuquerque calling for an ambitious EU-wide “financial services simplification package”.

This political pressure is building at precisely the moment when the Commission is preparing its report on banking sector competitiveness, in response to a call for evidence to which we submitted a response.

On one hand, the Fed is at last completing the US transposition of Basel III standards, which represents genuine progress towards international regulatory convergence. On the other, it is using this exercise in compliance to introduce several substantial easings that cut against the very prudential logic these standards are designed to reinforce.

The G-SIB surcharge reduction: a decision without evidential foundation
The most contestable element of Bowman's announcement is the downward revision of the surcharge imposed on globally systemically important banks (G-SIB surcharge). Bowman justifies this reduction on the grounds that the coefficients used to calculate the surcharge have not been updated since 2015 and have thus “drifted” from the international methodology. She proposes indexing these coefficients to economic growth, on the basis that balance sheet expansion in line with GDP does not reflect a genuine increase in systemic risk.

This argument deserves scrutiny. The size of large US banks has not merely grown in line with the economy: it has also been accompanied by deepening interconnections with the non-bank financial sector, greater exposure to derivatives markets, and increasing complexity in trading activities. The IMF (October 2025) and the ECB/ESRB (January and February 2026) have explicitly flagged that these interdependencies act as amplifiers of systemic shocks. Reducing the G-SIB surcharge in this context means lightening the safety buffer of precisely those institutions whose failure is most likely to trigger a system-wide crisis.

The “credit to the real economy” claim is not backed by evidence
Bowman's central argument is that “excessive” capital requirements constrain lending to households and businesses, and therefore hamper growth, employment and living standards. The rhetoric is well-worn, the metaphor convenient. Her speech bears a telling title—“Capital Rules for the Real Economy”—that presupposes what it would need to prove.

Independent academic research does not support this claim. An ECB study (Behn & Reghezza, 2025) covering large euro area banks between 2019 and 2024 finds that capital requirements have no statistically significant effect on profit efficiency, and that the CET1 level that would maximise productive efficiency is around 18%—well above current levels. A Discussion Paper Bundesbank Discussion Paper (2025) covering US and European banks reaches the same conclusion: no negative link between capital ratios and profitability. The Financial Policy Committee reaffirmed in December 2025 that better-capitalised banks are, on the contrary, more stable lenders across the economic cycle.

The causal chain Bowman invokes—lower capital equals more credit to the real economy—is not empirically documented. What is documented, on the other hand, is that large US banks announced record shareholder returns in 2025, with share buybacks and dividends exceeding $120 billion. Capital requirements have clearly not prevented generous shareholder payouts; there is no evidence that further easing will translate into lending rather than further distributions.

The SVB lesson already forgotten
Less than three years ago, the failure of Silicon Valley Bank illustrated precisely what regulatory rollback—presented, again, as a proportionality measure—can produce in practice. In 2018, raising the systemic threshold from $50bn to $250bn in assets removed SVB from enhanced Fed supervision, a decision presented at the time as reasonable and targeted. The outcome was a bank failure requiring emergency public intervention that briefly threatened the stability of the US financial system. The speed with which this episode appears to have left institutional memory is itself cause for concern.

Public procurement as a strategic tool for the green and just transition

Madeleine Péron — 2026-01-20T16:45:39Z

How to ensure that public procurement is wisely directed towards a more sustainable economy ?

Based on our work on Industrial policy and ecological transition, we welcome the initiative of the Commission to align public procurement directives with broader social, environmental and strategic goals.

Public procurement should be fully recognised as a strategic policy instrument at the heart of the European Unions ecological, social and industrial transition.

The revision of EU public procurement rules is a decisive opportunity to:

make green and socially responsible public procurement the default option across the EU;
integrate total cost and life-cycle approaches, rather than price-only criteria;
better connect public procurement with industrial strategy, innovation and employment objectives;
facilitate cooperation, mutualisation and coordination at European and territorial levels.

Given its scale and market-shaping power, simplification of procurement rules must not lead to weaker standards, but rather to greater legal certainty, clearer expectations for contracting authorities and bidders, and stronger implementation capacity.

By making sustainable procurement the default through genuine simplification, systematizing life-cycle approaches, explicitly connecting procurement to industrial strategy, enabling multi-level mutualisation, and introducing progressive EU content requirements linked to sustainability, the EU can transform €616 billion in annual spending into a powerful engine of transition, and pretend to even more impact through lower levels of procurement.

The revision of EU public procurement rules is a critical juncture to align public spending with the Union's ecological, social and industrial ambitions. The current moment—with the Clean Industrial Deal, Industrial Decarbonisation Accelerator Act, and clear political commitment to strategic autonomy—offers unprecedented opportunity for transformation to the benefit of citizens, workers and future generations.

Photo de Waldemar Brandt sur Unsplash

Open letter to the European Parliament on the digital euro: “let the public interest prevail”

Jézabel Couppey-Soubeyran — 2026-01-12T15:15:54Z

Our scientific advisor Jézabel Couppey-Soubeyran is one of seventy European economists and policy experts calling on members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to back a digital euro that serves the public interest, arguing that it is crucial for Europe's monetary sovereignty and for guaranteeing access to central bank money in an increasingly cash light economy.

The Veblen Institute advocates since 2023 for a digital euro with a strong public option, diffuse directly by the ECB or by public financial institutions, in addition to commercial banks. Otherwise, private stablecoins and foreign payment giants may gain even greater influence over Europe's digital payments.

The signatories, including former European Bank for Reconstruction and Development vice president José Leandro and French economist Thomas Piketty, describe the proposed central bank digital currency (CBDC) as a public good.

Download the open letter here.

Complaint against four EU Member States to put an end to investment treaties protecting frozen Russian assets

Mathilde Dupré — 2025-12-17T05:00:00Z

As EU Member States struggle to reach an agreement ahead of the European Council of 18–19 December on the use of frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine's reconstruction, the proposal is facing strong legal resistance within the EU. At issue is the growing risk of litigation based on bilateral investment treaties, already used by sanctioned Russian oligarchs and companies to claim massive compensation. While Belgium is demanding guarantees against potential legal action and Member States are slow to denounce treaties nevertheless deemed incompatible with EU law, six European organisations are filing a complaint against France, Germany, Sweden and Austria to compel Member States to put an end to them (1).

The fear of litigation through investment treaties has been explicitly invoked by the Belgian Prime Minister to justify his reluctance ahead of the European Council of Heads of State on the proposal to use Russian assets to finance a reparations loan for Ukraine. While immobilized assets belonging to Russian public institutions are mainly held by the European depository institution Euroclear, based in Belgium, other assets are reportedly held directly by commercial banks across the EU (including €18 billion in France — which may explain the French presidency's lukewarm support for the European proposal).

These concerns do not appear entirely unfounded, as the Central Bank of Russia announced on Friday 12 December that it had filed a claim before the Moscow Arbitration Court against Euroclear in an attempt to recover alleged losses. At the same time, Russian companies and Kremlin-linked oligarchs are using investment treaties to challenge the international sanctions imposed on them and to seek restitution of their assets, with compensation on top (see our European investigation published on Tuesday 9 December).

The 26 known investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) cases, as well as threatened claims brought against sanctions, already amount to USD 62 billion. This figure is close to the USD 70 billion in military aid provided by the EU to Ukraine since 2022. The actual amount is likely to be significantly higher, as in more than half of the cases no information is available regarding the sums claimed.

Belgium is now requesting guarantees in order to accept the use of frozen assets, in particular assurances that it would have access to funding equivalent to the entire package should it face legal proceedings or retaliation from Moscow.

How can the continued existence of investment protection treaties between EU Member States and Russia — which provide the legal basis for these proceedings — be justified after the invasion of Ukraine? (2) This question is all the more pressing given that, as early as 2009, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that the investment protection treaties of Sweden, Austria and Finland were incompatible with EU law, particularly with regard to the Council's power to impose sanctions (3). Yet the three Member States concerned by the CJEU ruling have so far failed to remedy the situation, as even acknowledged by the Swedish government in a recent report (4). Worse still, beyond these three countries, most of the old BITs of EU Member States also lack the safeguards required by the CJEU concerning provisions on the free movement of capital.

This is why six European organisations (the Veblen Institute in France, PowerShift in Germany, Attac Austria and Friends of the Earth Sweden, with the support of Friends of the Earth Europe and the European Coalition for Trade Justice) are today filing a complaint against four Member States (France, Germany, Sweden and Austria) to demand the termination of these treaties, which violate EU law.

In December, Ursula von der Leyen suggested denouncing the investment protection treaty between Belgium and Russia. In the European Commission's proposed compromise on the reparations loan, Member States would also be invited to simultaneously terminate their bilateral investment treaties with Russia.

According to Mathilde Dupré, Co-Director of the Veblen Institute: “After climate action and the exceptional measures adopted by governments in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, national security policies are now being challenged by sanctioned foreign investors through investment arbitration. This system of exceptional justice severely restricts States' capacity to act, all the more so in a context of heightened geopolitical tensions. States can no longer afford to let it persist.”

Notes

(1) See the press kit presenting the complaint and the full text of the complaint.

(2) France itself is being sued by a sanctioned Russian investor in a dispute following the cancellation of the “Montagne d'Or” mining project in French Guiana. In addition, France is also being sued by Russian-Armenian businessman Samvel Karapetyan, whose villa on the French Riviera was seized by French authorities following allegations of money laundering and of having acted as a front man for the sanctioned oil and gas giant Gazprom.

(3) The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued three judgments against Austria, Sweden and Finland (Cases C-118/07, Commission v Finland; C-205/06, Commission v Austria; C-249/06, Commission v Sweden), concluding that the clauses on capital transfers in extra-EU BITs conflicted with the Council's power to unilaterally impose restrictive measures on third countries under certain conditions.

(4) Swedish National Board of Trade (2024), En modernisering av Sveriges investeringsskyddsavtal.

(5) France and Germany are the EU Member States with the highest number of investment protection treaties. Most of these treaties were concluded at a time when provisions were few and rudimentary, and they do not include the safeguards now required under EU law.
Austria and Sweden have already been found by the CJEU to have failed to remove the incompatibilities between their old pre-accession BITs and EU law.
None of the four countries has brought its BITs into compliance with EU law.
This infringement complaint also targets other incompatibilities of old investment protection treaties between Member States and third countries in light of CJEU case law.
If the European Commission were to intervene regarding the old investment treaties of these Member States, the procedure could have repercussions for all investment treaties concluded by other EU Member States, as they share similar characteristics.

European Commission confirms weakening of pesticide legislation

Mathilde Dupré & Stéphanie Kpenou — 2025-12-16T08:43:00Z

On 16 December, the European Commission presented its “omnibus” proposal on food safety. While a leaked draft had revealed a significant weakening of EU health and environmental protections for pesticides, the final proposal only marginally adjusts this orientation without altering the overall logic of the text.

Maintaining the principle of unlimited approval for certain pesticides. The principle of unlimited approval would not apply to substances identified as candidates for substitution and - new compared to the leaked version - to substances for which the risk assessment reveals uncertainties or data gaps.

Confirmed reduction in Member States' margin of discretion in light of new scientific data. FSA studies will now prevail, although Member States may request the Commission to re-examine a substance and prepare a new study.

Grace periods. The Commission partly revises its initial proposal. The standard grace period remains 18 months but may be extended to 36 months if no viable alternative is available.

No concrete progress on import requirements. The proposal falls short of the leaked version, which provided for an immediate and automatic reduction in MRLs for the most dangerous substances. This measure would have covered only a quarter of the 72 substances banned in the EU and excluded many products (animal feed, processed products, etc.). In its final proposal, the Commission states that it will wait for the outcome of an impact assessment before taking concrete action on this matter, without specifying whether it refers to the impact assessment announced in November 2025 or to the general ex ante impact assessment process preceding proposals for European legislative acts.

Infringement complaint against France and three other EU Member States

Mathilde Dupré & Stéphanie Kpenou — 2025-12-16T05:00:00Z

Why?
Investment arbitration has become a weapon of mass deterrence. Foreign investors — multinationals or ultra-wealthy individuals — use it to prevent States from adopting ambitious laws, especially on climate or public health.
Fossil fuel companies are the primary users of these secret special tribunals. They demand, and sometimes obtain, exorbitant compensation whenever a State adopts a law that threatens their profits.
Today, the system is also used by Russian companies and oligarchs to challenge the international sanctions they face.
Investment treaties undermine our environmental commitments and our human rights obligations. Besides, most of these treaties were signed by EU Member States more than 20 years ago and do not contain any safeguards preventing arbitral tribunal from interpreting and interfering with national law. Thus, these obsolete treaties are also incompatible with EU law.
In 2020, EU Member States terminated more than a hundred treaties among themselves.
Since 2022, 10 EU Member States and the European Union have withdrawn from the Energy Charter Treaty.
Around 1,400 investment treaties between EU Member States and third countries still remain.
They must urgently be abolished or fundamentally reformed.

What is investment arbitration?
Many trade and investment treaties include investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) clauses. These give international investors the right to sue host States and demand enormous financial compensation if governments adopt new regulations that could limit company profits — even when those regulations serve the public interest.
ISDS allows foreign investors to bypass national courts and directly bring claims against the host State before an international arbitral tribunal. Only foreign companies can sue States — never the reverse. These investors can claim, and obtain, damages amounting to millions or even billions, far beyond what national courts would award.
An international arbitral tribunal is usually composed of three individuals, most often private legal practitioners. One arbitrator is appointed by the investor, the second by the host State, and the presiding arbitrator is appointed either by the two others or by a third party. The arbitral tribunal's decisions are binding and enforceable and cannot be appealed. They may be annulled only on very limited grounds. Arbitration procedure is very opaque: most of the time, investors can impose confidentiality obligations on States, pleadings are not disclosed and the public cannot participate. In some instances, the mere existence of an arbitration case can be kept secret.

Who is initiating this action?
The Veblen Institute in France, Powershift in Germany, Attac Austria, and Friends of the Earth Sweden, with the support of Friends of the Earth Europe and the European Trade Justice Coalition are submitting the complaint.
These organisations have worked together for many years on the major obstacles that investment protection agreements (and investment protection provisions in trade agreements) pose to climate action and other public-interest policies. Their past actions have notably targeted TTIP (EU–US negotiations), CETA (EU–Canada agreement), and the Energy Charter Treaty. They also recently published an investigation into the use of investment treaties by sanctioned Russian oligarchs to challenge measures adopted by States in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Which States are targeted?
This legal action targets four EU Member States: France, Germany, Austria, and Sweden.
France and Germany are the EU Member States that have the largest number of investment protection treaties. Most of these treaties were concluded at a time where treaty provisions were sparse and rudimentary, lacking the safeguards now required under EU law.
Austria and Sweden have already been condemned by the CJEU for failing to eliminate incompatibilities of their old pre-accession BITs with EU law. To date, none of these four countries has brought their BITs into compliance with EU law. Sweden even explicitly acknowledged in 2024 that it still had not taken the necessary steps to comply with the ruling concerning it.
If the European Commission takes action concerning these Member States' old investment treaties, the procedure could have consequences for all investment treaties concluded by other EU Member States, as they present similar features.

What is the procedure?
This is an infringement procedure — meaning a formal complaint to the Commission asking it to act against Member States that are violating EU law.
It targets these States' maintenance of investment protection treaties with third countries that are incompatible with EU law.
With the filing of this complaint, we expect the Commission to require Member States to eliminate these incompatibilities. The simplest way to achieve this would certainly be to terminate these treaties, as Member States have already done among themselves and by withdrawing from the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).

Summary of CJEU rulings
In the Achmea (2018) and Komstroy (2021) judgments, the CJEU held that intra-EU ISDS mechanisms are incompatible with the principles of autonomy of the EU legal order and mutual trust between Member States. This means that interpreting and applying EU law is exclusively the role of the CJEU, and that Member States must comply with it and trust each other to respect their obligations under EU law.
In its 2019 Opinion 1/17 on CETA, the CJEU confirmed that although extra-EU ISDS is in principle possible, any international agreement concluded by the EU is compatible only if it does not undermine the autonomy of the EU legal order. In the same opinion, the Court made clear that an agreement containing ISDS would have such an adverse effect if the tribunals created under it could:
• interpret or apply provisions of EU law, or
• issue decisions preventing EU institutions from operating within the constitutional framework of the Union (for example, by finding that a public-interest measure compliant with EU rules constitutes unfair treatment of investors).

Notes

Ursula von der Leyen suggested in November that Belgium withdraw from the treaty signed in 1989 with Russia to mitigate the risk of claims by Russian investors (the BLEU–Russia BIT, i.e., between Belgium and Luxembourg and Russia).

Inconsistency between Article 2 of the Council Regulation adopted on 12 December, which prohibits capital transfers to the Russian Central Bank, and the BITs (including those of the targeted countries).

Draft Omnibus X on food and feed

Mathilde Dupré & Stéphanie Kpenou — 2025-12-12T10:36:43Z

On 16 December, the European Commission is expected to present a ninth “omnibus” draft regulation, this time on food security. The leaked working version published in the press paves the way for a significant weakening of the EU's health and environmental protections in the field of pesticides. Presented as a simplification measure, this reform could in fact profoundly reshape regulation in Europe.

What does the leaked proposal contain?

Unlimited approvals
Currently, pesticides are reassessed every 10–15 years in light of new scientific data. The proposal envisages unlimited authorisations for most substances. Without these periodic reviews, substances such as chlorpyrifos (a neurotoxin) or mancozeb (an endocrine disruptor) would never have been banned.

Reduced ability of Member States to act on new scientific evidence
Member States could rely on outdated EU assessments without integrating the most recent scientific data when granting national authorisations.

A doubling of grace periods
Even after being banned, hazardous pesticides could continue to be sold and used for an additional 3 years, prolonging exposure to toxic substances.

A partial step forward on import requirements
The proposal also envisages lowering residue limits for the most hazardous substances (carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, etc.) in imported products. This is a step forward, but it would apply to only a quarter of the 72 substances banned in the EU and would exclude many products (animal feed, processed goods, etc.).

This proposal is part of a broader “regulatory simplification” strategy launched by the Commission in 2024, with 8 Omnibus packages already adopted or under discussion in various fields (environment, chemicals, digital policy, etc.).

Strategic Autonomy, Finance and Deregulation: What Challenges for Europe?

Margaux Falise & Jézabel Couppey-Soubeyran & Wojtek Kalinowski — 2025-07-18T10:01:38Z

This summary highlights raised during the roundtable “What Finance for Strategic Autonomy?” held on July 1, 2025, at the Washington Plaza in Paris. The event was organized by the Veblen Institute, the Energy & Prosperity Chair, the Sorbonne Center for Economics, and the Convention des Entreprises pour le Climat. The conclusions and recommendations expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the participants.

Welcome by Lorraine Sereyjol-Garros, director general of TC ICAP, and Wojtek Kalinowski, co-Director of the Veblen Institute

Participants (in order of intervention): Claude Raynal, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee; Jean Boissinot, director of studies and risk analysis at ACPR; Thierry Philipponnat, economist and former chief economist at Finance Watch; Gabriel Cumenge, deputy director of banks and general interest financing at the General Directorate of the Treasury; Karen Degouve, Sustainable Finance leader; Laurence Scialom, professor of economics at Paris Nanterre University; Sandrine Ménard, deputy director of corporate financing and financial markets at the General Directorate of the Treasury, Jérôme Reboul, deputy secretary general in charge of the Regulation and International Affairs Directorate at AMF; Marie Ekeland, founder of investment funds Daphni and 2050, General Manager of 2050; Jérôme Saddier,president of Crédit Coopératif; Shahin Vallée, director of the Geoeconomics programme at German Council on Foreign Relations; Jézabel Couppey-Soubeyran, lecturer at Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University, scientific advisor at the Veblen Institute, scientific director of the Energy and Prosperity Chair; Bernard Cazeneuve, former Prime Minister.

The debates were moderated by Jean-Marc Vittori, editorialist and columnist at Les Echos newspaper, and Madeleine Péron, economist at the Veblen Institute.