Conference Agenda

The past decade has brought securitization into the European Union (EU), where numerous political and economic issues have been elevated to the security domain, including trade and industrial policy. The securitization of trade ties in with the rhetoric of open strategic autonomy and the new set of defense instruments that have been approved, such as the anti-coercion mechanism. The securitization of industrial policy is aimed at ensuring resilience and innovation in the Single Market. This paper looks at how the securitization of the two policies affect each other. While using domestic subsidies and public-private partnerships, the new EU industrial policy also needs to guarantee imports of key materials and technologies (i.e. ensure stable or resilient provision of inputs). This is where trade policy is affected; numerous types of deals emerge to ensure such imports from different suppliers, avoiding dependency in trade relations (at least from non-allies). Our hypothesis is that these deals are not transitory because the stability of these value chains was already an aim before securitization. To test the hypothesis, we map the securitization deals and their contents and compare them to the industrial and trade policy objectives. We expect to find that industrial policy identifies the inputs whose imports should be ensured while trade policy identifies the suppliers to be approached.

An uncertain global economy, extreme climate events, and the pandemic have all contributed to the uncertainty surrounding the resilience and flexibility of the global food system. The world community is now concerned about the gap in global development, of which food security is a significant part. As a result of the pandemic and the effects of climate change, food hunger has spread widely. China has an experience when it comes to implementing food security cooperation because of its extensive expertise in food and agricultural governance. China has attempted to apply its foreign policy ideas into a form of cooperation with Central and Eastern Europe. The trade cooperation between China and CEE is also now focused on agriculture and food production. As a result, numerous bilateral and multilateral forums for intergovernmental discussion were established.
This research is to determine the food trade potential between Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and China using the revealed comparative advantage index, furthermore, examine the patterns and trends of agriculture trade between CEE countries and China. Assessing the vulnerabilities and resilience of CEE-China supply chains in the post-pandemic era, and analyzing the effects of trade disruptions on food availability, access and utilization in both partners. To achieve the goals of this study, a qualitative methodology will also be used.

Isaac Asimov was a sensible actor in early anticipating the issue of responsibility and control of what we’re used to call, may be inappropriately, “AI”, drafting more than 80 years ago his “Laws of Robotics”, a great reference in the related debate, although limited or conflicting in terms of definitions or applicability.

In this framework, it would also be interesting to explore what the role of sovereign countries may be in putting biases in AI to defend their scopes, values, and even their survivability, on the long run.

As well as selecting and recruiting people with the support of AI to work for public administrations, may become a challenge and an issue.

Or taking into account the role of private entities, in particular multinational corporations, in acting as AI providers for states, and on the other hand, dependencies of states from multinational corporations, especially in sensitive algorithmic processing, it may become a further issue and, of course, a risk if not appropriately compliant and respectful of human laws and regulations.

Because of its characteristics and although considering the ethical issues mentioned above, AI tools could potentially offer interesting solutions to effectively face the growing complexity of international trade of sensitive technologies such as dual use products, starting from a possible dynamic review of main international export control regimes and sanction programs, going down to a EU better regulation that implements such policies, up to an effective support to mitigate related risks to economic operators and researchers.