"If Europe wants to be a global champion in dealing with climate change, leaders...have to explain to their publics why the current status quo is not defensible." Judy Dempsey, Carnegie Europe.

Dempsey will join a roster of distinguished speakers at the 35th annual Camden Conference, Europe: Challenged at Home and Abroad, February 25 – 27. Some of Europe’s most daunting challenges — the pandemic, the climate crisis, migration and corruption — will be addressed at the Conference by leading experts on European policy and strategy.

Dempsey, a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe, writing for the Strategic Europe blog, said “The EU’s geo-economic and geopolitical agenda is based on curbing climate change, becoming carbon neutral, and speeding ahead with digitalization. These are ambitious long-term goals. Implementing and realizing them runs counter to several member states’ governments. Whether it’s the car industry in Germany, the coal mining sector in Poland, or the energy mix in France, politicians put short-term gains before long-term benefits.

"Lifestyles will have to change if the planet is to recover from the current levels of human-made degradation and destruction,” said Camden Conference, in a news release.

Judy Dempsey has been editor-in-chief of Carnegie Europe's Strategic Europe blog since 2012. Prior to that, she was a columnist for the International New York Times, and the International Herald Tribune’s Germany correspondent in Berlin from 2004-2011. From 2001 to 2004, Ms. Dempsey was the Financial Times diplomatic correspondent in Brussels covering the NATO and European Union enlargements. She has also served as the FT’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Berlin correspondent and Eastern European correspondent.  She has been awarded several journalism prizes; the most recent was the 2021 Ernest Udina Prize, awarded by the European Journalists Association in Catalonia. She is the author of several publications including Das Phänomen Merkel.

Dempsey will join nine other world experts for the 2022 Camden Conference along with  Conference Moderator David Brancaccio, host of American Public Media's Marketplace Morning Report. Speakers will participate live from wherever they are living or working around the globe as the Conference once again pivots to a virtual, live-streaming format due to the realities of the global COVID pandemic. The live-streaming format allows audience interaction (Q&A) with the speakers, in keeping with the Camden Conference mission of fostering informed discourse on world issues.

“The annual Camden Conference is considered one of the top foreign affairs conferences in the United States and has attracted large audiences from Maine and over 25 other states. Participants include an informed public as well as high school and college educators and students,” said the Conference.

For more information on the 35th Anniversary Camden Conference: Europe: Challenged at Home and Abroad, February 25-27, 2022, and to register, please visit camdenconference.org.