Event Date: November 12, 2025 - 2:00pm to 3:30pm
Location: FSS 4004, 120 University Private, University of Ottawa

Presented by CIPS and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

Canada and the European Union have recently rediscovered their many commonalities and intensified their cooperation. Not only did the EU include Canada in the “Horizon Europe” program in 2024, both sides also signed a Security and Defense Partnership in June 2025. Join this event for the unique opportunity to engage in a conversation about the current state of Canada-EU relations with Charlotte Bué, Head of Division for the United States and Canada at the European External Action Service (EEAS) in Brussels.

Speaker:

Charlotte Bué is Head of Division for the United States and Canada in the European External Action Service (EEAS) since March 2025. She joined the EEAS in 2017 where she has served as adviser to several senior managers, including two Secretary Generals, and covered a wide array of foreign, security and external relations files. Prior to this, she worked for six years at the European Commission’s DG DEVCO, and was involved in the negotiations of the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs. She also worked as a research assistant at the European University Institute in Florence. She holds a Doctorate in Political Science with a specialisation in International Relations from Sciences-Po Paris.

Chair:

Jan Claudius Völkel is DAAD Seconded Professor in German Studies and International Relations at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) and the School of Political Studies (SPS), University of Ottawa, Canada. His work focuses on Europe and the contemporary Middle East and North Africa (MENA) with several years of work experience in countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and others. Before coming to Ottawa, Jan was Academic Dean at the Institute for the International Education of Studies (IES) in Freiburg, Germany, and had research and teaching positions at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Cairo University, the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, Universität Salzburg and Universität Freiburg. He was awarded the European Union’s prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship in 2017 and is an alumnus of the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA). Since 2008, he serves as the MENA regional coordinator at the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI).