Frans Timmermans with Gordon Brown: The Way Forward for Europe (2020 Event)

2020 was, without doubt, a banner year for challenging our
understanding of what constitutes a global problem and how
equipped we are to address that task collectively. At the start
of that year — what feels like an age ago — after generations of
scientific findings and urgent calls to action, a unified,
collective response to the global climate crisis remained
elusive. But there were some green shoots of hope.


Late in 2019, the European Commission announced the formation of
the European Green Deal, a body that Commission President Ursula
von der Leyen declared was Europe’s ‘Man on the Moon moment’: a
plan to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent. Dutch
politician and diplomat Frans Timmermans was named Executive
Vice-President for the project and planning, and began
negotiating with vigour. Then the pandemic hit.


In this special conversation recorded live at the 2020 Edinburgh
International Book Festival, Timmermans sits down with former UK
Prime Minister Gordon Brown to discuss the politics of
environmental change. How much action is needed for meaningful
change? What are the roadblocks to genuinely ending Europe’s
dependence on fossil fuels? And what does a green recovery from
COVID-19 look like?