Aspen Institute Spain and the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) are organizing a dialogue on “European technological sovereignty: human values and geopolitical challenges” with José Ignacio Torreblanca, Senior Adviser and Distinguished Policy Fellow at ECFR and professor in the Department of Political Science at UNED, and José M. de Areilza, Secretary General of Aspen Institute Spain. The conversation will be moderated by Ignacio Gomá Garcés, Public Affairs Partner at Kreab, and will take place on Monday, March 16, at 7:00 p.m. at Pérez-Llorca (Castellana 50, Madrid).

Against a backdrop of rivalry between powers, digital acceleration, and economic interdependence, the debate will explore how European democratic principles—protection of fundamental rights, defense of competition, and the rule of law—can be projected into global technological governance.

The speakers will address the tension between regulatory simplification and deregulation, the European Union’s ability to export its regulatory standards, legal and strategic instruments to counter market power in the digital economy, and the intersection between regulation, technological competition, and geopolitical security.

This meeting is the closing session of a program that has featured Anu Bradford, Columbia Law School; Carissa Véliz, Oxford; Mehreen Khan, The Times; Angela Zhang, University of Southern California; and Anna Wojtas, Women in Defense Tech, among other speakers.

The program consists of three discussion sessions to be held once a month during January, February, and March, in digital format. These sessions will bring together 30 participants selected by Aspen and ECFR. The speakers will give brief opening remarks, followed by an open discussion with the participants. A report will be prepared and published based on these sessions, with the aim of sharing the conclusions of each session with a wider audience and thus increasing the reach of the program in a final in-person session open to the public.

José M. Areilza

José M. de Areilza is Secretary General of the Aspen Institute España Foundation and full professor and holder of the Jean Monnet Chair at ESADE. He is also a visiting professor at INSEAD Business School (2018-21) and London Business School (2022-26). He has published extensively on European integration and geopolitics. He writes a weekly column on international affairs in the ABC newspaper. He is Vice President of the Spain-United States Council Foundation, a member of the Royal Board of Trustees of the Naval Museum, a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ecfr.eu), and Academy Faculty at Chatham House, London. Areilza holds a law degree with special honors from the Complutense University of Madrid, a master’s degree in law from Harvard University, a master’s degree in international relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a doctorate in law from Harvard University. In 1991, he was admitted to the New York Bar.

José Ignacio Torreblanca 

José Ignacio Torreblanco is Head of the Madrid office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and professor of Political Science at the National Distance Education University (UNED). He also holds a PhD in Political Science from the Complutense University of Madrid. He was a Fulbright scholar at George Washington University in Washington DC and a postdoctoral fellow at the European University Institute in Florence. As an expert on disinformation, he has worked with the Working Group on Disinformation Campaigns of the Spanish National Security Directorate in the office of the Prime Minister and has presented evidence on disinformation and foreign interference to the Joint National Security Committee of the Spanish Parliament’s Congress and Senate. He writes a weekly column in El Mundo called “Café Steiner” and is a weekly contributor to Spain’s National Public Radio. Before joining ECFR, Torreblanca was editorial director at El País, where he wrote a weekly column and blog for 10 years.