UK-EU reset and how the UK might achieve ‘good growth’

Thursday 5 June 2025, 2-4pm.

West Dean, Dilke House, 1 Malet St, London, WC1E 7JN.

This panel event brings together leading academics to reflect on key challenges and opportunities for UK trade policy, focusing in particular on how it influences UK economic growth and productivity. Labour has identified kickstarting economic growth as the top objective of its ‘mission-driven government’. But serious headwinds have emerged in the form of Trump’s tariffs, giving rise to a strategic dilemma about the extent to which the UK should seek to appease Trump and concede to US demands. Labour has said it will pursue a re-set of its EU trade relationship but has also affirmed that it will continue to uphold Brexit ‘red lines’ on avoiding deep EU integration. In both cases, questions emerge about not only impacts on growth but also whether to pursue growth at any cost, and how to balance it against other objectives such as regulatory sovereignty and economic security.

Speakers

• Sasha Roseneil FAcSS, VC, University of Sussex
• Anand Menon (Chair), Director, UK in a Changing Europe and Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs, Kings College London
• Meredith Crowley, Professor of Economics, University of Cambridge
• Emily Lydgate, Co-Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory and Professor of Environmental Law, University of Sussex
• Michael Gasiorek, Director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy, Co-Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory, and Professor of Economics, University of Sussex

Provisional agenda

14.00   Tea and coffee on arrival

14.15   Welcome by Sasha Roseneil 

14.25   Chair's introduction and introductory remarks from each speaker

14.50   Panel discussion

15.05   Q&A

15.45   Conclusion and close

About the Speakers

Sasha Roseneil began her term as the Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of Sussex in August 2022. Previously, Sasha was Pro-Provost for Equity and Inclusion and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences at UCL. Before that, she was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Essex, and held leadership positions at Birkbeck, University of London and the University of Leeds. 

Anand Menon is Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King's College London in the United Kingdom and in 2014 was appointed as Director of UK in a Changing Europe. Previously Anand was a founding Director of the European Research Institute at the University of Birmingham and has also held positions at Oxford, New York University, Columbia University and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

Meredith Crowley is a Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of St. John’s College, and a Research Coordinator at the Janeway Institute at Cambridge. She is a co-investigator of the publicly funded Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR - London), and a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of CEPII and the Kiel Institute.

Emily Lydgate is Deputy Director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP), a specialist in international trade law and Deputy Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. Emily is a Specialist Advisor to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee (UK House of Commons) and has provided expert testimony for a number of UK Parliamentary Committees on the implications of the UK’s exit from the EU.

Michael Gasiorek is Director of the Centre for Inclusive Trade Policy (CITP), Professor of Economics at the University of Sussex, and Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory. Michael Gasiorek is a specialist in international trade policy and regional integration and has been responsible for the delivery of numerous reports and training programs on trade-related issues inter-alia for the UK governments, the European Commission and the World Bank.