Report Launch: A Certain Idea of Europe
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Report Launch: A Certain Idea of Europe
Please note this event will be online. To register for the zoom session, please CLICK HERE.
As war rages on Europe’s borders and US commitment to the continent becomes less certain, the question of EU defence has become urgent. Should the EU develop its own military capabilities? Can it act with unity in a crisis? And what does this mean for NATO – and for the UK?
This event marks the launch of A Certain Idea of Europe, a new paper making the case for a more unified European defence strategy. It explores what recent defence spending pledges mean in practice, and argues that Europe must act now to avoid fragmentation and diminished global influence.
We’ll be joined by a leading expert in the field to discuss what this critical moment means for the EU, Britain, and the transatlantic alliance.
Dr Gesine Weber
Gesine Weber is a fellow on GMF’s Geostrategy team, where she works on European security and defence issues. Based in Paris, she focuses on EU defence initiatives, security and defence policy of the E3 (France, Germany, and the United Kingdom), and Europe’s role in the global order.
Prior to joining GMF, she worked as a defence policy adviser at the German parliament and as a consultant for the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation in Shanghai. She has also worked as an associate researcher for the European Council on Foreign Relations, conducted research as a Visiting Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University with a Fulbright-Schuman fellowship, and was a nonresident Hans J. Morgenthau Fellow at the Notre Dame Center for International Security from 2024-25.
Gesine holds a PhD in Defence Studies from King’s College London, master’s degrees from Sciences Po Paris and the Freie Universität Berlin, and studied Mandarin at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her writing and commentary appears regularly in European and other international media, including the BBC, the Neue Züercher Zeitung, Politico, and France 24, and on her Substack Geopolitical Europe. She speaks English, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese.
Eliot Wilson
Eliot Wilson is Senior Fellow for National Security at the Coalition for Global Prosperity and Contributing Editor at Defence on the Brink. He writes regularly on politics, international security and defence for The Spectator, City A.M., The Hill, i News, CapX, The Daily Telegraph and others.
Eliot was previous a senior official in the House of Commons, including working on the Defence Committee and as secretary to the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
Volodymyr Mialkovskyi
Volodymyr Mialkovskyi is a Political Counsellor at the Embassy of Ukraine in the United Kingdom since February 2024. He brings over 15 years of diplomatic experience, including service at the Ukrainian Mission to the United Nations. He was a member of Ukraine’s delegation to the UN Security Council during its non-permanent membership in 2016–2017, focusing on European conflict issues and contributing to the drafting and negotiation of Security Council and General Assembly resolutions. Volodymyr has also held positions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and the Secretariat of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine.
Dr Theo Zenou
Theo is a Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society. He recently completed a PhD in history at Cambridge University, where he also taught undergraduates. He has been a Theodore Sorensen Fellow at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and a Visiting Researcher at Boston University.
Theo has written features, essays and reviews for The Washington Post, The Economist, FT, The Guardian, The Times and Sunday Times, TLS, Spectator and others.
Prior to his doctorate, he worked in TV for several years.
