Event background

With this event, A Path for Europe (PfEU) was presenting this year’s first Coffee Conversation where our very own Vlad Surdea-Hernea talked about one of the most complex, widely-used yet contentious climate policy tools, carbon pricing, and its distributional effects, with Declan Ingham. More specifically, they explored whether by relying on this market mechanism, the least-well off in society actually have to disproportionately bear the costs of the fight against climate change.

Speaker: Vlad Surdea-Hernea

Vlad Surdea-Hernea is a Permanent Author at A Path for Europe (PfEU). Vlad is a young researcher interested in the social dimension of European climate and energy policy. With a background in political science, he is currently finishing his dissertation at the Hertie School—The University of Governance in Berlin, where he evaluated the distributional effects of carbon pricing in Eastern Europe. In the past, he worked as a freelance consultant in projects financed by the World Bank, the European Commission, the GIZ or the German Environment Agency.

In conversation with: Declan Ingham

Declan Ingham is a Research Associate for a A Path for Europe (PfEU). His areas of interest include the European Union’s efforts to decarbonise the economy and guarantee a just transition, economic and social policy that boosts well-being, wages, and employment as well as European cohesion and macroeconomic architecture. Declan holds a Master of Public Policy from the University of Toronto and a BA from the University of Ottawa. His professional background includes indigenous negotiations, designing social and income-support programs, trade union advocacy, and evaluating public agencies.