Pascal Lamy

Why organisations work with Pascal Lamy

• He spent eight years running the WTO and five years as the EU’s Trade Commissioner. Few people alive have personally negotiated as much of the architecture that boards now watch breaking down.
• He works at the level of operating substance, not commentary. Doha, EU enlargement trade chapters, the China accession follow-through, the transatlantic disputes: he was in the room.
• He frames geoeconomics and geopolitics as a single system, an argument set out with Nicole Gnesotto in Strange New World, which gives leaders a working language for decisions they used to treat as separate.
• He is a credible bridge into European institutional thinking. Chef de cabinet to Jacques Delors for nine years, now President of the Paris Peace Forum and President emeritus of the Jacques Delors Institute.

Biography highlights

• Director-General of the World Trade Organization, 2005 to 2013, re-elected unanimously for a second term.
• European Commissioner for Trade, 1999 to 2004, under Commission President Romano Prodi.
• Chef de cabinet to Jacques Delors at the European Commission, 1985 to 1994.
• CEO of Credit Lyonnais through its restructuring and privatisation, 1994 to 1999.
• Author of The Geneva Consensus (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and co-author of Strange New World: Geoeconomics vs Geopolitics (Odile Jacob, 2020).
• President of the Paris Peace Forum; CEPR Distinguished Fellow; affiliate professor at HEC Paris and CEIBS Shanghai.

Biography

The system of rules that governed cross-border trade for three decades is no longer the system companies are operating in. Tariffs, export controls, sanctions regimes and industrial subsidies have become first-order strategic variables, and the institutions designed to arbitrate them have lost most of their authority. Pascal Lamy spent two decades inside that machinery and is one of the few public figures who can describe, from the inside, what is breaking and what is taking its place.

As Director-General of the World Trade Organization from 2005 to 2013, re-elected unanimously for a second term, he led the institution through the Doha Round and through China’s full integration into the global trading system. Before that, as European Commissioner for Trade from 1999 to 2004, he handled the EU’s most consequential trade files of the period, including its position on WTO accession negotiations and transatlantic disputes.

His earlier career sits at the heart of the European project. For nine years he was chef de cabinet to Jacques Delors at the European Commission, working on the single market, the run-up to monetary union and successive enlargement. He then ran Credit Lyonnais through its restructuring and privatisation, a reminder that his read on policy is paired with operating experience inside a balance sheet under pressure.

He now writes and convenes from a small set of platforms: President of the Paris Peace Forum, President emeritus of the Jacques Delors Institute, CEPR Distinguished Fellow, affiliate professor at HEC Paris and CEIBS Shanghai. With Nicole Gnesotto he co-authored Strange New World, the argument that geoeconomics and geopolitics now have to be read as one system. For boards trying to set capital allocation under that framing, he is among the most credible voices available.

Key speaking topics

• Global trade and the future of the WTO
• Geoeconomics and geopolitics
• EU-US-China relations
• European integration and the EU policy agenda
• Sanctions, export controls and industrial policy
• Globalisation and supply chain restructuring
• Multilateral governance under strain

Ideal for

• Boards and executive committees of multinationals with material exposure to US, EU and China trade policy
• CSOs, heads of public affairs and chief economists setting macro and political risk frameworks
• Investor and asset manager forums focused on capital allocation under geopolitical stress
• Senior policy and government affairs leaders working on EU institutional questions

Audience outcomes

• A working map of how the trade and geoeconomics system is actually being rewired, from someone who helped write the previous version
• A grounded read on the EU-US-China triangle that goes beyond headline risk
• Sharper questions for the board on sanctions exposure, supply chain restructuring and industrial policy alignment
• A vocabulary for treating geoeconomics and geopolitics as one decision frame, not two