Topic: The Future of Europe

Isabelle Kumar

An award-winning former prime-time news anchor with over 20 years of international journalism experience, Isabelle moderates high-level global forums with authority, clarity and editorial rigour. Trusted by governments, international organisations and major institutions, she leads complex conversations on public health, sustainability and global policy with precision and balance.

As lead anchor for Euronews-NBC, she travelled the world interviewing presidents, prime ministers and the heads of multilateral institutions, earning a reputation for incisive questioning and calm command under pressure.

She has moderated landmark international debates, including the first-ever EU Presidential Debate, high-level sessions at the World Economic Forum in Davos and strategic forums for the European Commission. Today, she works closely with international organisations, NGOs and corporate leaders on issues spanning environmental health, sustainable development, food systems, technology and AI.

Her clients include the European Commission, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, The Consumer Goods Forum and Procter & Gamble. She has served as Master of Ceremonies for major UN and EU ceremonies and chaired closed-door discussions with senior European leaders, including former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Before Euronews, Isabelle built her foundation in international broadcast journalism at CNN, APTN and Reuters.

Bilingual in French and English and holding British and German nationality, she brings a genuinely international perspective to every stage. She is also a committed disability advocate and serves as President of a charity supporting people with autism.

Clients value her thorough preparation, calm authority and ability to translate complex technical discussions into engaging, solutions-focused dialogue.

Timothy Garton Ash

Timothy Garton Ash CMG FRSA (born 12 July 1955) is a British historian, author and commentator. He is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University. Much of his work has been concerned with the late modern and contemporary history of Central and Eastern Europe. He has written about the Communist regimes of that region, their experience with the secret police, the Revolutions of 1989 and the transformation of the former Eastern Bloc states into member states of the European Union. He has examined the role of Europe and the challenge of combining freedom and diversity, especially in relation to free speech.

In the 1980s, Garton Ash was Foreign Editor of The Spectator and a columnist for The Independent. He became a Fellow at St Antony's College in 1989, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution in 2000, and Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford in 2004. He has written a weekly column in The Guardian since 2004 and is a long-time contributor to the New York Review of Books. His column is also translated in the Turkish daily Radikal and in the Spanish daily El País, as well as other papers.

Honours he has received for his writing include the David Watt Memorial Prize, Commentator of the Year  in the ‘What the Papers Say’ annual awards for 1989, the Premio Napoli, the Imre Nagy Memorial Plaque, the Hoffmann von Fallersleben Prize for political writing, the Order of Merit from Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, and the British CMG. In 2005, he featured in a list of 100 top global public intellectuals chosen by the journals Prospect and Foreign Policy, and in Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people. In 2006, he was awarded the George Orwell Prize for political writing.

Howard Davies

Howard Davies is Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Prior to his current appointment he was Chairman of the Financial Services Authority, the UK's single financial regulator since 1998.

Howard Davies had previously served for two years as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England after three years as Director General of the Confederation of British Industry. From 1987 to 1992 he was Controller of the Audit Commission. From 1982 to 1987 he worked for McKinsey & Company in London and during 1985-1986 was seconded to the Treasury as Special Adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had previously worked at the Treasury and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, including two years as Private Secretary to the British Ambassador in Paris.

Howard Davies was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Merton College, Oxford, where he gained an MA in history and modern languages. In 1979 he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship and in 1980 took an MSc in management sciences at Stanford Graduate School of Business, California.

Since 2002 he has been a Trustee of the Tate. He is a member of the governing body, Royal Academy of Music; Patron of Working Families; and in 2004 was elected to an Honorary Fellowship at Merton College. In 2004 he joined the board of Morgan Stanley as a non-executive director. He was appointed to the Board of Paternoster in 2006 as a non-executive Director, and is chairing the Man Booker Prize in 2007. His book "The Chancellors' Tales" was published in November 2006.

From 2003 to 2011 Davies served as Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

In 2009 Davies was appointed as advisor to the Investment Strategy Committee of the Government Investment Corporation of Singapore. Two years later he joined its International Advisory Board. Davies resigned from both positions in September 2012, on appointment to the chair of the Airports Commission. In 2010 he became a non-executive Director of Prudential plc, and Chair of the Risk Committee. Also in 2011 he joined the board of the Royal National Theatre. From 2012 to 2015 Davies was a member of the Advisory Board of the SWIFT Institute. Davies is a Council Member of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research in Singapore.

Pat Cox

Pat Cox is a former Irish politician and television current affairs presenter. He was President of the European Parliament from 2002 to 2004 and served as a member of the parliament from 1989-2004. He is now a consultant for European Integration Solutions.

Born in Dublin but raised in Limerick, Cox first came to prominence as a journalist, then a presenter, with RTÉ's Today Tonight, a four nights a week current affairs programme which dominated the Irish television schedules in the 1980s. Cox left the programme to become a political candidate. He was elected an MEP in 1989 for the constituency of Munster, representing the Progressive Democrats (PDs). In the 1992 General Election he was also elected to Dáil Éireann as a TD for Cork South Central.

Following Desmond O'Malley's retirement from the party leadership in 1993, Cox stood for election to the post, but was beaten by Mary Harney. Cox became deputy leader.

Cox left the PDs in 1994 in a dispute over his seat as an MEP. It was expected that Cox would not contest his seat in the 1994 European Elections, with O'Malley, who had a large Munster base, becoming the party candidate. However Cox almost literally at the last minute chose to contest the seat as an independent, beating O'Malley, the PD candidate. On being elected, he resigned his Dáil seat and a by-election was held on November 10, 1994, which was won by Fine Gael.

He was elected president of the ELDR group in the European Parliament in 1998 and was unanimously re-elected Group President in June 1999 following the elections to the European Parliament. He resigned this post when he became President of the European Parliament on January 15, 2002 in accordance with an agreement between the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and the ELDR groups at the start of the term (in the customary two-way split of the five-year Presidency of the European Parliament).

On 20 May 2004 he was awarded the Karlspreis for his achievements with regard to the enlargement of the European Union and for his work in promoting greater EU democratisation.

He did not contest the 2004 elections to the European parliament. The Christian Democrats (European People's Party - EPP) and Socialist Groups agreed at the customary two-way split of the Presidency of the European Parliament. Josep Borrell Fontelles, a Spanish Socialist, assumed the Presidency on 20 July 2004, holding it until January 15, 2007.

Cox is a member of the Comite d'Honneur of the Institute of European Affairs. In 2006 he was elected President of European Movement, an international pro-European lobby association. In June 2009 Pat Cox temporarily stepped down as President and took over the position of the campaign director for the pro Lisbon treaty initiative Ireland for Europe. He resigned as president of European Movement in May 2013.

Also in 2009, Cox co-founded the European Privacy Association.

On 15 September 2010 Cox supported the new initiative Spinelli Group, which was founded to reinvigorate the strive for federalisation of the European Union (EU).
He is a Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Romania and a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. He received the 2004 Charlemagne Prize for his efforts in the Eastward expansion of the European Union.

Since June 2012 Cox and Aleksander Kwaśniewski lead a European Parliament monitoring mission in Ukraine to monitor the criminal cases against Yulia Tymoshenko, Yuriy Lutsenko and Valeriy Ivaschenko.

Since 1 January 2015, he is the president of the Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe.