Venice, 19–20 June 2026
Theme: “Globalisation and Fiscal Populism”

The second Economic Policy: Papers on European and Global Issues Conference will take place in Venice, focusing on “Globalisation and Fiscal Populism”.

This event will bring together leading researchers and policymakers to examine how the twin forces of globalisation and fiscal populism are reshaping the international economic system.

Over the past two decades, deepening trade and financial integration has collided with widening regional and social inequalities, creating fertile ground for political movements that promise quick, fiscally expansive interventions while downplaying long-term constraints. At the same time, open capital markets, fiscal rules, and independent monetary institutions have narrowed governments’ room for manoeuvre, often intensifying—rather than easing—domestic pressure for visible, short-term relief.

This conference will explore how globalisation’s distributional effects interact with the rise of populist fiscal strategies; how institutional frameworks can help contain destabilising policy cycles; and which alternative models—whether productivist, inclusive, or otherwise—might offer economically credible, politically viable, and democratically legitimate paths beyond the current tension between global integration that lifted billions out of poverty and fiscal backlash.