Philippe Legrain

Boris Johnson won the December 2019 UK general election on the promise that he had an “oven-ready deal” to “get Brexit done.” But while the UK did leave the EU in January 2020, Johnson’s deal included a deeply contentious protocol governing the special trade status of Northern Ireland. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s successful negotiation of an amended deal with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is thus a welcome development – one that could mark a turning point in UK-EU relations.

Read my latest piece for Project Syndicate.

Secondo l’economista britannico, nonché fondatore di Open Political Economy Network (OPEN), Philippe Legrain, l’apertura verso gli immigrati, oltre che ad essere moralmente giusta, è anche economicamente e culturalmente arricchente. Per Legrain la libertà di movimento, all’interno di un mondo sempre più interconnesso e globalizzato, è uno dei principali diritti da difendere e promuovere, perché solo attraverso questo principio fondamentale l’individuo ha la reale possibilità di definirsi nel corso della sua vita, non solamente attraverso gli standard culturali del suo luogo di nascita, ma anche per le sue reali capacità e doti personali. Nell’ottica di un mondo sempre più aperto e multiculturale, secondo Legrain, l’immigrazione permette inoltre un arricchimento sociale e culturale per tutti i cittadini di un Paese: l’arrivo di persone da altri Stati, infatti, comporta la diffusione di una più ampia dieta gastronomica, induce ad una maggiore creatività nell’arte e nella musica e consente un allargamento delle relazioni sociali che stimola l’innovazione e la conoscenza del mondo. L’immigrazione, insomma, non comporta la sostituzione della cultura nativa con quella degli “stranieri”, bensì l’integrazione e l’arricchimento di entrambe.

Leggi l’articolo di Daniele Cornia.

“L’immigration est aujourd’hui, sans doute, le sujet le plus controversé dans les pays occidentaux. Nos sociétés (relativement) ouvertes et libérales sont menacées par des personnes qui rendent responsables les étrangers en général, et les immigrés en particulier, pour tout ce qui selon eux ne va pas dans nos vies et sociétés” écrit Philippe Legrain dans Them and us. Alors que le rejet de l’immigration a été le moteur du populisme comme du vote pour le Brexit, cet essayiste britannique, ancien journaliste à The Economist et conseiller de José Manuel Barroso à la Commission européenne, livre un plaidoyer assumé. 

Merci, Thomas Mahler. Lisez son article sur le site de l’Express.

“Them and Us: How immigrants and locals can thrive together” won the Diversity, Inclusion and Equality award at the Business Book Awards last night.

Thank you so much!

“Them and Us” by Philippe Legrain, a former Economist journalist, sets out the benefits of migration and asks how newcomers and locals can get along better. “Wretched Refuse?” by Alex Nowrasteh and Benjamin Powell, a think-tanker and an academic, asks a crucial question: might immigration from poor, corrupt countries undermine the institutions of rich, well-governed ones?

Mr Legrain’s book is the more accessible: though underpinned by scholarship it is chatty, entertaining and full of anecdotes, such as the one with which this review begins. He breezily rebuts popular arguments for closed borders, and turns populist slogans upside down.

Thank you, Robert Guest.

Read the full review. Find out more about Them and Us.

“A full-throated defence of open borders and freedom of movement could easily feel too late at a time when Home Office officials looked at shipping asylum seekers to distant islands. Legrain’s work is anything but: it makes a solid rebuttal against the polemics of anti-immigrant talking heads with an unabashedly positive case for immigration grounded in facts, and ends with practical advice for resistance.”

Thank you, Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan.

Read the review in full.

Read more about Them and Us.

Two promising #COVID19 vaccines, with immigrants to thank for both.

BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine has been developed by a Turkish migrant to Germany.

Moderna was co-founded by Canadian biologist and Lebanese-born scientist and investor.

So much for nativists who claim immigrants have nothing to contribute.

Read my latest for Foreign Policy

Far-right populism is not dead, but it can be defeated.

Are Europeans up to the task?

Read my latest for Project Syndicate

How will society change after the coronavirus pandemic?

The adoption of digital technologies has advanced in leaps and bounds, but it is still implausible that this spells the end of the office or the demise of business travel, let alone the decline of cities, which may rather become younger and more liveable. Perhaps the biggest question mark is how politicians will respond to post-crisis demands for a fairer society.

Read my latest for Brussels Times.

It’s economically significant and politically beneficial, but it leaves the eurozone’s deeper problems unresolved.

Read my latest for Project Syndicate

Eurozone finance ministers have finally agreed a package of measures to respond to the coronavirus crisis. But in the face of an unprecedented medical and economic emergency, it is inadequate. What the eurozone needs is a large, temporary coronavirus Marshall Plan, funded by common debt that the ECB would buy and hold for the foreseeable future. 

Read my latest for Project Syndicate.

As Europe faces an unprecedented coronavirus crisis that is so far hitting Italy and Spain particularly hard and is straining the EU to breaking point, an exceptional “corona bond” would provide the fiscal firepower to support stricken businesses and workers and demonstrate European solidarity. If not now, when?

Read my latest for Brussels Times

My piece was quoted by Ishaan Tharoor in the Washington Post as follows:

The coronabonds, wrote economist Philippe Legrain, would “give the eurozone greater geopolitical reach and provide greater protection against President Donald Trump’s abuse of the dominance of the US dollar for harmful political ends.” It would also prove that “European solidarity exists,” according to Legrain.

What might the coronavirus crisis entail for the future of globalisation?

Philippe Legrain, founder of international think tank the Open Political Economy Network and a former economic adviser to the president of the European Commission, is not confident the current crisis will lead to any renewed commitment to globalization.

He believes the international response has been much less coordinated compared with that to the global financial crisis, when the G20 came up with an unprecedented rescue package.

“There has been very little international cooperation during this crisis. Most governments have acted unilaterally. Even within the European Union, countries have failed to respond to Italy’s urgent request for medical supplies, although China did,” he said.

“The closure of borders, the restrictions on trade－such as India’s with pharmaceutical exports－and the perception of foreigners as vectors of disease are all creating more national economies and more nationalistic politics.”

Later, I discuss the potential for new forms of globalisation.

“Globalization exists in a political context. In the 19th century, it largely took place within European empires. In the 20th century, it took place through US-backed international institutions, and in the 21st century, it may exist within China-centered institutions such as the BRI,” he said.

Read the piece.

Until recently, most policymakers and investors remained complacent about the potential economic impact of the coronavirus crisis.

Now they realise that it is generating a global shock, which may be sharp—but which most still expect to be short.

But what if the economic disruption has an enduring impact? Could the coronavirus pandemic even be the nail in the coffin for the current era of globalisation?

Read my latest column for Foreign Policy.

It is quoted by Marc Saxer in International Politics and Society.

Read my latest piece for Foreign Policy

Unprecedented uncertainty hangs over international trade. While markets and multinationals are—understandably—fixated on the immediate prospects for trade relations between the US and China, far bigger long-term questions cloud the future. This is often simplistically framed as a binary question: is globalisation set to go into reverse? Or more politically, are the US and China heading for a new Cold War? But in practice, the future pattern of international trade could take many different forms over the next decade or two.

Read my foresight piece for the Oracle Partnership

A new report I co-authored for OPEN with Hosuk Lee-Makiyama explains how AI could help EU institutions become more capable, competent, cost-effective and closer to citizens.

Check it out here.

“The eurozone’s trend rate of growth is very low due to poor productivity and dismal demography, so cyclical downturns easily lead to stagnation,” said Philippe Legrain, visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics. “In addition, monetary policy can’t do much more, while fiscal stimulus is likely to be too little, too late.”

Read the full piece.

In Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, economist and financial journalist Philippe Legrain does a thorough job of debunking the myth that “government workers are ever really in a position to adequately assess which workers the economy needs at any given time.” First, because the market’s needs fluctuate so widely and so quickly, and second, the human variable is so unpredictable, with an individual’s academic skills or degree offering only a small clue of what their future employment or societal contributions will be.

Read Toula Drimonis’s piece for Ricochet.

Does the flagging eurozone need a fiscal boost as well as a monetary one? The debate in policy circles is slowly shifting.

I’m quoted right at the start of this excellent analysis piece by Mark John for Reuters.

“There is a shift towards talking about stimulus but there is no dramatic leap forward,” said Philippe Legrain, adviser to the European Commission during the aftermath of Europe’s 2009 sovereign debt crisis and author of the book “European Spring”, a diagnosis of Europe’s economic failings.

“There is no sense of urgency so far … That might happen when the euro zone enters recession.”

Read the full piece.