Slippery Slope is far from the usual run of uncritical EU-related studies. Its aim is to set alarm bells ringing across Europe with its revealing insights into our increasingly troubled future. In his book which he will discuss in this lecture Giles Merritt argues that the steepness and suddenness of Europe's decline in the 'Asian century' will depend on the actions we Europeans undertake. And there are two key lessons that we need to face from the beginning. Firstly, the 'good times' aren't coming back without a massive effort on our part. And secondly, in a fast-developing world of 9-10 billion people, no single European country can survive and prosper on its own.

Giles Merritt was named by the Financial Times in 2010 as one of 30 'Eurostars' who most influence thinking on Europe's future, along with the European Commission's president and the secretary-general of NATO. For 15 years a Financial Times foreign correspondent, Merritt has reported and commented on European affairs since the early 1970s. He went on to found 'Friends of Europe', one of the leading think tanks in Brussels, and the policy journal Europe's World, of which he is the Editor-in-Chief. His Op-Ed columns in the International Herald Tribune from 1985-2010, and since then in the hundreds of newspapers around the world that subscribe to Project Syndicate, have ranged widely across political and economic issues in Europe. His previous books include World Out of Work, an award-winning analysis of unemployment issues, and The Challenge of Freedom, on the difficulties facing post-communist Eastern Europe.

Kevin Featherstone is Head of the European Institute, Eleftherios Venizelos Professor of Contemporary Greek Studies and Professor of European Politics at LSE.

The LSE European Institute (@LSEEI) is celebrating its Twenty Fifth Anniversary in 2016. It is a centre for research and graduate teaching on the processes of integration and fragmentation within Europe. In the most recent national Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) the Institute was ranked first for research in its sector.

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Podcast

A podcast of this event is available to download from Slippery Slope: Europe's troubled future.

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