Ulrike Guérot

Life and work

Ulrike Guérot studied Political Sciences, history and philosophy and got her PhD from University of Münster, Germany, in 1995 with a dissertation on the French Socialist Party and Europe. From 1992 to 1995, she worked in Bonn as a parliamentary assistant in the office of Karl Lamers, MP, by then spokesperson of the German Christian Democratic Party for foreign affairs. In this period, she contributed to the so-called “Schäuble-Lamers” paper on core-Europe of 1994. In 1995, she moved to Paris and worked first as a Director of Communication for the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe (AMUE); and then as Chargée de Mission for the Paris-based Think Tank “Notre Europe”, under the auspices of former President of the EU Commission, Jacques Delors. Then she moved to the US and served from 1998 to 2000 as Assistant Professor at the Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies in the Department for European Studies of Johns Hopkins University, in Washington, D.C.

After her return to Berlin in 2000, Ulrike Guérot took over the European Studies Unit at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) until 2003 and then moved as Foreign Policy Director to the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund (GMF).

From 2007 onwards, she opened and built up the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and served until 2013 as its first Director. During this time, Ulrike Guérot focused in her numerous publications on various aspects of European integration policies, the process of European constitutionalization and European foreign policy, especially on Franco-German and transatlantic relations. During this time, she established the program “Germany in Europe” at the ECFR, analyzing the shifts of the German role in the European Union. Within this program, she published two books, firstly “What does Germany think about Europe?” (Ed. together with Jacqueline Hénard) in 2011; and secondly “Germany in Europe: A Blog Chronicle of the Euro-crisis” in 2013.

In Spring 2012, Ulrike Guérot was Visiting Scholar at the German House of New York University (NYU) and in Fall 2014, she had a guest status at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

In September 2014, she founded, together with Victoria Kupsch, the European Democracy Lab (EDL), which is attached to the European School of Governance (eusg), Berlin, in order to focus on the future of European Democracy post-euro crisis. Core idea of the Lab is the development of a Res Publica Europeae, a political entity of Europe as a Republic. On this, Ulrike Guérot has widely published, most recently in the annual edition 2014 of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. Ulrike Guérot has sketched out her idea of Europe as a Republic in a speech at the Berlin conference Re:Publica . In the meantime, an English and a Spanish version of this speech have been published on http://www.opendemocracy.net and on http://www.eurozine.com. An Italian and French version are in preparation. The idea of Europe as a Republic was also republished at the Digital Bauhaus Conference for societal design in Weimar 2015 and represented at the Summer Academy 2015 of the respected American Chautauqua Institute.

In April 2013, Ulrike Guérot published, together with the Austrian Novelist, Robert Menasse, a "Manifesto for a European Republic". The European Democracy Lab has coupled this Manifesto with an appeal for a new Europe (#newEuorpe), which Ulrike Guérot supports, and which so far has been signed by a variety of European academics, intellectuals, artists and policy makers, such as French star economist Thomas Piketty, Club-of Rome member Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker or professor Gesine Schwan. The appeal has been drafted by a group of young Europeans, organized in European Alternatives (EA), of which Ulrike Guérot is a board member. The Manifesto has been reproduced in the catalogue of Kunsthaus Zurich for the exhibition “Europe – the future of the past”. In parallel, Kunsthaus Zurich shows the installation and diashow “Amikejo”, an art project on European friendship, which Ulrike Guérot helped developing together with the Berlin-based concept artist Valeska Peschke.

Ulrike Guérot has widely published on European, transatlantic and international affairs in German and European newspapers and she is frequently invited to comment in European media on a range of issues. For her engagement with respect to European integration, she was awarded in 2003 with the French cross of honor, ‘L’Ordre national du Mérite’. In the recent debate on a Greek exit of the Eurozone, she has strongly engaged publicly against a Grexit.

In the autumn of 2013, she was part of the official delegation of the German Federal President Joachim Gauck on his state visit to France.

Ulrike Guérot is further teaching classes at Viadrina European University in Frankfurt/ Oder and Bucerius Law School in Hamburg. She is an honorary board member of the European Professional Group of the Berlin Europa-Union Deutschland.

Along with Sebastian Dullien, Guérot has emerged as a critic of ordoliberalism and its role in the Eurozone crisis. Writing in 2012, the authors assert how ordoliberalism is central to the German approach to euro crisis resolution, which has often led to conflicts with other European countries.

Ulrike Guérot has two grown up sons. She is divorced from the French Diplomat Olivier Guérot. She is disciple of the international Jivamukti Yoga movement.