BRUSSELS — The Brits are making a comeback in the EU capital.
Exhibit A: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s international policy shop is wrapping up a hiring spree in Brussels.
In just a year, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) went from virtually non-existent in the Brussels bubble to recruiting some half-dozen experts with deep experience navigating the EU institutions. Though institute officials insist it’s all part of a broader expansion plan globally, Blair is boosting his Brussels presence as the sting of Brexit eases and as Keir Starmer looks poised to ride a Labour wave back to power in the U.K. later this year with a Blair-inspired strategy.
According to one EU official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, the opening of the office raised the question of a British comeback to Brussels.
Despite the global reach and bold-faced names working for TBI — including ex-Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin — TBI Brussels Director Seamus Jeffreson said EU actors “don’t know very much” about the initiative. And Blair himself isn’t exactly helping.
He no-showed the office’s formal opening in late November, sending a video message instead. And at an October meeting with Commission Ursula von der Leyen, a lobbying disclosure suggests they talked wars in Ukraine and the Middle East — not client governments’ priorities like critical raw materials and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.
“We’re embedded in prime ministers’ or presidents’ offices, and we work on the priorities that those governments have,” Blair said in his video greeting. “One major priority that they have is obviously to work with the European Union.”
The aim in Brussels isn’t to be embedded in the Berlaymont, Jeffreson acknowledged. “I don’t think we’re going to have pretensions to be advisory to the institutions here.” Rather, the idea is to help the governments they are advising in, say, Kenya or Indonesia to understand relevant EU policies — and feed those global perspectives back into the EU bubble.
The move to open an office on Avenue des Arts was “demand-driven” from other TBI strategists in more than 30 countries, said Jeffreson, amid growing global clamor to understand the EU’s policies on climate and tech.
Blair, who was a divisive figure in his own Labour Party, spent a decade as prime minister, leading an extremely unpopular decision to launch the U.K. into joining the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. After his time in 10 Downing Street, Blair consulted for governments with dubious human rights records, such as Azerbaijan and Libya, and founded a handful of charities before turning to TBI.
Launched in the wake of the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election in late 2016, TBI advises political leaders on implementing their ambitions — fueled by the broader goal of staving off extremism. It’s a business that charges governments for its services, but doesn’t seek to make a profit; instead, proceeds support pro bono work for governments that can’t afford it, Jeffreson said.
The resulting work is part strategic advisory, part “think-tankery,” said Jeffreson, who took on the task of Brussels expansion in November 2022. Before that, he was TBI’s point man in Senegal, advising President Macky Sall.
Artificial intelligence, climate and life sciences are the top issues for the Brussels office so far. But the new hires were chosen for their knowledge of Brussels, rather than subject expertise. In addition to Jeffreson (a former director of CONCORD Europe, a network of NGOs), they include Antonia Battaglia, a former official at DG NEAR; Camilla Bougrine, a former British diplomat in Brussels and Commission official; and Basma Abassi, who’d most recently worked for the lobbying behemoth FTI.
Jacopo Barigazzi contributed reporting.
