Conference Speakers – Biographies

The State of the Union 2018: Speakers’ biographies László Andor is Senior Fellow at Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and Visiting Professor at the University of Brussels (ULB). He served as EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (2010-2014). He has been a member of the Board of Directors at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2005-2010), representing Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Slovak Republic and Croatia. Professor Andor holds an MA in Development Economics from the University of Manchester and a PhD in Economics from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He has also been advisor to the Hungarian Prime Minister. Tony Barber is Europe Editor at the Financial Times, where he is a columnist and specialist writer on European political, economic and business news. He has worked at the FT since 1998, including as Brussels Bureau Chief, Rome Bureau Chief and Frankfurt Bureau Chief. From 1990-1997 he was East Europe Editor and Europe Editor at The Independent. He worked as Reuters Foreign Correspondent from 1981-1989. During this time he was based in New York, Washington and Chicago, before moving to Vienna, Warsaw, Moscow, Washington again and Belgrade. Tony Barber was educated at St John’s College, Oxford University. Leonardo Bassilichi is President of the Chamber of Commerce of Florence. In 1998 he became head of Operations Management of the family business, Bassilichi SpA. Later, in 2012, he was appointed CEO. From 2011-2015 Bassilichi was a member of the international organisation YPO, as well as being a member of the Board of Directors of the Florence Centre for Fashion. Between 2014 and 2015 he was a member of the Chamber Consortium Governing Council for Internationalization. Between 2011-2014 Bassilichi was Vice President of growth policies, industrial relations and security within Confindustria Florence (2011-2014). Catia Bastioli is Chairwoman of Terna. She is member of key advisory boards at the EU level, including the High-level Panel of the EU Decarbonisation and the Bioeconomy Panel. She is the author of numerous publications and international patents, contributing to an industrial culture based on low environmental impacts, eco-sustainability of production processes and innovation. She was awarded the EU Inventor of the Year 2007; the Giulio Natta Award for Chemistry (2015); the Honoris Causa Degree in Industrial Chemistry by the University of Genoa (2008) and the Honoris Causa Degree in Materials Engineering by the University of Palermo (2016). 1 Brando Benifei is a member of the European Parliament. He is a member of the Committee on employment and Social Affairs and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence. In 2009 he was appointed Head of Europe for Young Democrats and at the same time became vice president of the European Community Organization of Socialist Youth (ECOSY). He is also vice-chair of the Youth Intergroup and of the Disability Intergroup. Among his primary interests are the Digital Agenda and technology-related issues, in particular for the impact they have in creating new jobs and thus on youth employment Thomas Beukers is a Senior Legal Advisor at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the EUI Law Department and an ADEMU researcher. He defended his PhD at the Law faculty of the University of Amsterdam in 2011 and was awarded a cum laude distinction. From 2012 to 2014 he was a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow in Law at the EUI. His research interests include the constitutional law of the European Union and the EU’s Economic and Monetary Union. He is an editor of the European Constitutional Law Review. Federica Bicchi is Associate Professor of International Relations of Europe at the London School of Economics, where she teaches European Foreign Policy. She is also Part-time Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute. Professor Bicchi holds a PhD in Political Science from the EUI. Her research interests include the foreign policy of the European Union towards its Southern neighbourhood and the construction of knowledge within the foreign policy system of the EU and within the European External Action Service in particular. Matteo Biffoni is Mayor of Prato and the migration delegate at the National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI). He was elected city councillor in 2004, and again in the 2009 administrative elections. In December 2012 he entered parliament for the Democratic Party, and in 2013 was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. He resigned as a Member of Parliament in 2014, to launch his candidacy for mayor of Prato. In October of the same year he was elected president of the Province of Prato. Already responsible for ANCI's immigration and integration policy, he was elected as President of ANCI Toscana in September 2015. Simona Bonafè is a Member of the European Parliament and belongs to the Socialists and Democrats group. She currently serves on the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety and is the Parliament’s rapporteur on the EU Circular Economy Package. In addition, Bonafè is a member of the Committee on Economic Affairs and the EP’s delegations for relations with the United States and with the People’s Republic of China. Previously, she was a Member of Parliament in Italy, a local Councillor for the Environment in Scandicci, and a journalist. Bonafè started her political activity in 2002 in the centre-left party “La Margherita”. 2 Marco Buti has been Director General for Economic and Financial Affairs at the European Commission since December 2008. He was educated at the Universities of Florence and Oxford. Since 1987, when he joined the European Commission, he held various positions including that of economic advisor of the Commission President. He is the Commission Finance Deputy in the G7 and G20. He has been visiting professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, the University of Florence and at the European University Institute. He has published extensively on EMU, macroeconomic policies, structural reforms, welfare state, and unemployment. Jasper Chalcraft is a Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, EUI. He is also a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Sussex. His current research project is titled, 'Heritages of Dissent: How migrants and minorities negotiate Europe’s plural pasts'. He has a particular interest in cultural studies, social and cultural anthropology and the conservation and Restoration of cultural heritage. Pilita Clark is an associate editor and business columnist at the Financial Times. She writes a weekly column on modern corporate life, as well as features and other articles. She has worked for the FT since 2003, covering aviation and the environment, and was previously a Washington correspondent for Australian newspapers and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Patricia Clavin is a Fellow in the British Academy and in the Royal Historical Society. She is also a Foreign Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and an editor for the Oxford History Monographs series, serving on the editorial board Past and Present. She studied at King's College London, obtaining a BA Hons in Modern History and her PhD. She was Reader in Modern History at Keele University before joining Jesus College in October 2003. Dr Clavin has held the British Academy ‘Thank-Offering-to-Britain’ Senior Research Fellowship (2008-2009). In 2015 she was awarded a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. Thomas Cooley is Paganelli-Bull Professor of Economics, Emeritus at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, and Professor of Economics in the NYU Faculty of Arts and Science. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Cooley is the former President of the Society for Economic Dynamics. In the corporate sector, he has been a senior advisor and member of the board for several companies. He has authored more than 100 scholarly articles on economics. and statistics and frequently writes opinion pieces for economic and business publications. 3 Giancarlo Corsetti is Professor of Macroeconomics at Cambridge University, fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and director of the Cambridge INET Institute. Previously, he taught at the European University Institute and the Universities of Rome III, Yale and Bologna. His contributions range from theoretical and empirical work on fiscal and monetary policy, to analysis of currency and financial crises. He serves as co-editor of the Journal of International Economics, Programme Director at Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, and scientific consultant to the Bank of England and the European Central Bank. Corina Crețu has been the European Commissioner for Regional Policy since 2014, and a member of the presidency of the Party of European Socialists since 2011. She was an MEP from 2007-2014 and then Vice-president of the European Parliament in 2014. In Romania, she was the Vice-president of the Social Democratic Party of Romania, a Senator, and Spokesperson and Head of public communication of the Romanian President. Before she started her political career, she was a reporter and commentator for several Romanian newspapers. She graduated at the Faculty of Economic Planning and Cybernetics at the Academy of Economic Studies of Bucharest. Alfonso Dastis is the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain. Previously, he was Ambassador to the Netherlands (2004-2007) and Permanent Representative of Spain to the European Union (2011-2016). Dastis has been an advisor at Spain’s Permanent Representation to the UN in New York; Director of the Support Unit of the Organising Committee of the Spanish Rotating Presidency of the EU; a member of the Convention on the Future of Europe and Secretary-General for Foreign Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.

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