Economy and security: Bringing Europeans together?

Mika Aaltola is the Director of FIIA. Dr Aaltola is also a professor of International Relations at Tallinn University, Estonia, and holds the rank of docent at Tampere University. He has been a visiting fellow at Cambridge University, Sciences Po (CERI), and Johns Hopkins as well as a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota. His areas of expertise include the US global role, dynamics of power politics, and Finnish foreign policy. His latest published monograph is “Democratic Vulnerability and Autocratic Meddling – The ‘Thucydidean Brink’ in Regressive Geopolitical Competition” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2021).

Jean-Dominique Giuliani is the Chairman of the Robert Schuman Foundation. He was Director of the Cabinet of the President of the Senate, René Monory, and Director at SOFRES. A former Special Advisor to the European Commission, he is member of the Supervisory Board of Arte and co-editor of the Permanent Atlas of the European Union, Editions Marie B (5th edition, 2021). He is the author of The Big Shift éditions de l’école de Guerre, 2019.

Pascale Joannin is Managing Director of the Robert Schuman Foundation. A former auditor at the 56th national session of the Institute of Higher National Defence Studies (IHEDN), she is co-editor of the Permanent Atlas of the European Union (Marie B Editions, 5th edition, 2021). She is the author of L’Europe, une chance pour la femme, Note de la Fondation Robert Schuman, n° 22, 2004. She has published numerous studies on European issues.

Päivi Puonti works at Etla Economic Research as a researcher in the macroeconomics and public finance research program. She specializes in the use of time series econometric methods in economic policy impact assessment, and has studied monetary and fiscal policy. In Etla’s forecasting group her area of responsibility is among other things forecasting Finland’s public finances and monitoring EU’s economic policy. Previously Puonti has worked in the Ministry of Finance of Finland. She holds a Ph.D. in economics.

Niklas Helwig is a Leading Researcher at FIIA. His research focuses on EU foreign and security policy, German foreign and security policy, as well as the transatlantic security alliance. Before he returned to FIIA in 2019, he worked at the RAND Corporation, at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS, Washington), at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP, Berlin) and at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS, Brussels). He holds a PhD from the University of Cologne and the University of Edinburgh (‘co-tutelle’).

Juha Jokela is the Programme Director of the European Union and strategic competition research programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

Jokela’s previous academic and policy studies projects and publications include the EU’s sanctions policy, political implications of Brexit for the EU, political and security developments in the Arctic, Europeanisation of foreign policy, EU’s Asia relations, and Finland’s EU policy. His current research interests include differentiated integration in EU’s foreign policy, and the role of G7 and G20 in multilateral cooperation.

Jokela has previously worked at the EU Institute for Security Studies as a Senior Associated Analyst and Senior Visiting Research Fellow, as an Advisor at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, and as a Research Fellow and the Director of the Network for European Studies at the University of Helsinki. Jokela is a member of the board of Trans European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA), member of the Steering Committee of EuroMesCo, the main network of research centres and think-tanks in the Euro-Mediterranean area, and member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP).

Jokela holds a PhD from the University of Bristol (UK), which focused on Europeanisation and foreign policy in Finland and the UK, and a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Birmingham (UK).