Photo of Bart Szewczyk

Bart Szewczyk

Having served in senior advisory positions in the U.S. government, Bart Szewczyk advises on European and global public policy, particularly on technology, trade and foreign investment, business and human rights, and environmental, social, and governance issues, as well as conducts international arbitration. He also teaches grand strategy as an Adjunct Professor at Sciences Po in Paris and is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund.

Bart recently worked as Advisor on Global Affairs at the European Commission's think-tank, where he covered a wide range of foreign policy issues, including international order, defense, geoeconomics, transatlantic relations, Russia and Eastern Europe, Middle East and North Africa, and China and Asia. Previously, between 2014 and 2017, he served as Member of Secretary John Kerry’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he covered Europe, Eurasia, and global economic affairs. From 2016 to 2017, he also concurrently served as Senior Policy Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, where he worked on refugee policy. He joined the U.S. government from teaching at Columbia Law School, as one of two academics selected nationwide for the Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship. He has also consulted for the World Bank and Rasmussen Global.

Prior to government, Bart was an Associate Research Scholar and Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School, where he worked on international law and U.S. foreign relations law. Before academia, he taught international law and international organizations at George Washington University Law School, and served as a visiting fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies. He also clerked at the International Court of Justice for Judges Peter Tomka and Christopher Greenwood and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit for the late Judge Leonard Garth..

Bart holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge University where he studied as a Gates Scholar, a J.D. from Yale Law School, an M.P.A. from Princeton University, and a B.S. in economics (summa cum laude) from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He has published in Foreign AffairsForeign PolicyHarvard International Law JournalColumbia Journal of European LawAmerican Journal of International LawGeorge Washington Law ReviewSurvival, and elsewhere. He is the author of three books: Europe’s Grand Strategy: Navigating a New World Order (Palgrave Macmillan 2021); with David McKean, Partners of First Resort: America, Europe, and the Future of the West (Brookings Institution Press 2021); and European Sovereignty, Legitimacy, and Power (Routledge 2021).

This year’s Munich Security Conference reemphasized the need for Europe to invest in greater defense capabilities and foster a regulatory environment that is conducive to building a defense and technological industrial base. In Munich, President Ursula von der Leyen committed to appointing a European Commissioner for Defence, if she is reselected later this year by the European Council and European Parliament. And the EU is also due to publish shortly a new defense industrial strategy, mirroring in part, the first-ever U.S. National Defense Industrial Strategy (NDIS) released earlier this year by the Department of Defense.

The NDIS, in turn, recognizes the need for a strong defense industry in both the U.S. and the EU, as well as other allies and partners across the globe, in order to strengthen supply chain resilience and ensure the production and delivery of critical defense supplies. And global leaders generally see the imperative of working together over the long-term to advance integrated deterrence policies and to strengthen and modernize defense industrial base ecosystems. We will continue tracking these geopolitical trends, which are likely to persist regardless of electoral outcomes in Europe or the United States.

These developments across both sides of the Atlantic follow on a number of significant new funding streams in Europe over the past couple of years, for instance:

  • The 2021 revision of the European Defense Fund Regulation allocated €8 billion for common research and development projects, meant to be spent during the 2021-2027 multi-annual financial framework (MFF).
  • As a direct response to Ukraine’s request for assistance with the supply of 155 mm-caliber artillery rounds, the EU adopted the 2023 Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP), with a €500 million fund to scale up production of ammunition and missiles.
  • Most recently, the EU adopted the 2023 European Defense Industry Reinforcement through Common Procurement Act (EDIRPA), introduced a joint procurement fund of €300 million to facilitate Member States’ collective acquisition of defense products.
  • The European Peace Facility (EPF), an off-budget instrument, with an overall financial ceiling exceeding €12 billion, is primarily destined toward procurement of military material and large-scale financing of weapon supplies to allied third countries (including €6.1 billion for Ukraine).

Continue Reading Insights from the Munich Security Conference: Towards an Expanding U.S.-EU Defense Taxonomy?

On December 14, 2023, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2024 (NDAA), authorizing $886 billion in defense spending. Amid its numerous provisions, there is the concept of the “national technology and industrial base,” which now includes the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand and could potentially serve as the basis for wider industrial cooperation with European and other global partners. This could provide useful synergies with ongoing efforts in Europe to galvanize defense production and help ensure an enduring competitive edge for the wider West over potential adversaries—within NATO and with global partners.

The Global “National Technology and Industrial Base”

The national technology and industrial base (NTIB) is defined in U.S. law as “the persons and organizations that are engaged in research, development, production, integration, services, or information technology activities” in national security and dual-use areas. First established in 1994, NTIB initially included only Canada in addition to the United States. In 2016, however, United Kingdom and Australia were added, followed by New Zealand in 2022. NTIB entities may receive preference for certain limited procurement actions and may be exempted from certain foreign ownership or control/influence requirements.

The logic behind this initial expansion was to foster industrial defense cooperation among the Five Eyes allies, which already had provisions for intelligence sharing potentially required for sophisticated military projects. And the expected benefits were to leverage economies of scale, promote innovation, and increase interoperability.

Given Russia’s large-scale war of aggression against Ukraine and the longer-term challenge from China, the NTIB could be expanded further to ensure that the wider West is able to produce the military materiel required to deter and confront any security challenges. The United States and its NATO Allies have already faced stockpile constraints in providing weapons supply to Ukraine to continue waging its defense. Now, the 2024 NDAA has added Israel and Taiwan to a program started to expedite delivery and replenishment of munitions to Ukraine, which will put further pressure on existing production. The NTIB could also serve as the fulcrum to leverage European defense initiatives in light of Russia’s war of aggression.

European Defense Initiatives

The European defense landscape has long been characterized by severe under-investment and fragmentation among Member States, with less than one-fifth of investments in defense programs conducted in cooperation. In 2009, the European Union expressed its willingness to facilitate joint procurement with the adoption of procurement rules for munitions, arms, and war material in the Defense Procurement Directive. However, implementation was lacking, and most procurement contracts were still awarded without an EU-wide tender.Continue Reading U.S. Defense Bill’s Implications for European and Global Partners

A would-be technical development could have potentially significant consequences for cloud service providers established outside the EU. The proposed EU Cybersecurity Certification Scheme for Cloud Services (EUCS)—which has been developed by the EU cybersecurity agency ENISA over the past two years and is expected to be adopted by the European Commission as an implementing act in Q1 2024—would, if adopted in its current form, establish certain requirements that could:

  1. exclude non-EU cloud providers from providing certain (“high” level) services to European companies, and
  2. preclude EU cloud customers from accessing the services of these non-EU providers.

Data Localization and EU Headquarters

The EUCS arises from the EU’s Cybersecurity Act, which called for the creation of an EU-wide security certification scheme for cloud providers, to be developed by ENISA and adopted by the Commission through secondary law (as noted in an earlier blog). After public consultations in 2021, ENISA set up an ad hoc working group tasked with preparing a draft.

France, Italy, and Spain submitted a proposal to the working group advocating to add new criteria to the scheme in order for companies to qualify as eligible to offer services providing the highest level of security. The proposed criteria included localization of cloud services and data within the EU – meaning in essence that providers would need to be headquartered in, and have their cloud services provided from, the EU. Ireland, Sweden and the Netherlands argued that such requirements do not belong in a cybersecurity certification scheme, as requiring cloud providers to be based in Europe reflected political rather than cybersecurity concerns, and therefore proposed that the issue should be discussed by the Council of the EU.Continue Reading Implications of the EU Cybersecurity Scheme for Cloud Services

The field of artificial intelligence (“AI”) is at a tipping point. Governments and industries are under increasing pressure to forecast and guide the evolution of a technology that promises to transform our economies and societies. In this series, our lawyers and advisors provide an overview of the policy approaches and regulatory frameworks for AI in

In a new strategy published on July 11, the European Commission has identified Web 4.0 and virtual worlds—often also referred to as the metaverse—as having the potential to transform the ways in which EU citizens live, work and interact.  The EU’s strategy consists of ten action points addressing four themes drawn from the Digital Decade policy programme and the Commission’s Connectivity package: (1) People and Skills; (2) Business; (3) Government (i.e., public services and projects); and (4) Governance.

The European Commission’s strategy indicates that it is unlikely to propose new regulation in the short to medium-term: indeed, European Competition Commissioner Margarethe Vestager has recently warned against jumping to regulation of virtual worlds as the “first sort of safety pad.” Instead, the Commission views its framework of current and upcoming digital technology-related legislation (including the GDPR, the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the proposed Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) to be applicable to Web 4.0 and virtual worlds in a “robust” and “future-oriented” manner. 

What Are Virtual Worlds and Web 4.0?

The Commission defines virtual worlds as being “persistent, immersive environments, based on technologies including 3D and extended reality (XR), which make it possible to blend physical and digital worlds in realtime, for a variety of purposes.”  It considers Web 4.0 to be the “fourth generation of the World Wide Web,” which will feature “advanced artificial and ambient intelligence, the internet of things, trusted blockchain transactions, virtual worlds and XR capabilities.”  These will enable digital and real objects to integrate and communicate with each other to “seamlessly blen[d] the physical and digital worlds.”  According to Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, the EU will “connect virtual world developers with industry users, invest in the uptake and scale-up of new technologies, and give people the tools and the skills to safely and confidently use virtual worlds.”  The EU is keen to ensure that it establishes itself as a leader in Web 4.0 and virtual worlds, and that the emerging metaverse reflects EU values, principles, and fundamental rights. The strategy is the latest in a series of metaverse-related EU initiatives and announcements.Continue Reading European Commission Publishes New Strategy on Virtual Worlds

Rebuilding Ukraine, with an estimated cost of around $1 trillion, will be an unprecedented undertaking given the massive scale and uncertain environment. Although the reconstruction details are still being determined, the main international donors are likely to be the EU and its Member States, international financial institutions, and the United States. And while large-scale efforts are unlikely to start across all of Ukraine until after a peace agreement is reached, limited recovery projects have already been launched and may be expanded.

Marshall Plan Times Ten

Russia’s war of aggression has generated enormous economic damage in Ukraine, not to mention over 140,000 civilian and military casualties. According to the latest World Bank estimates, the overall damage in Ukraine resulting from the war is already around $425 billion. This consisted of $135 billion in direct damage and $290 billion in disruptions to economic flows and production.

Longer-term, Ukraine foresees around $1 trillion necessary for post-war reconstruction over a ten-year period. Depending on the depth and destruction of the war, however, even this colossal estimate may increase over time. By comparison, the oft-invoked example of the Marshall Plan—America’s historic reconstruction of Western Europe after World War II—was around $100 billion in current dollars spread over four years and across seventeen European countries. Ukraine may require that times ten over ten years and could become the world’s largest reconstruction effort since 1945.

To help meet this need, the international community has begun organizing donors’ conferences of governments and companies interested in supporting and rebuilding Ukraine’s economy. In July 2022, the Ukraine Recovery Conference was held in Lugano, Switzerland, with the participation of five heads of state and government and 58 international delegations (representatives of governments and international organizations). In October 2022, Germany and the European Commission co-hosted in Berlin a conference of experts to develop ideas for Ukraine’s reconstruction.

On June 21-22, 2023, the Ukraine Recovery Conference convened in London with officials from 61 countries, leaders of 33 international organizations, and numerous companies. At the conference, the European Commission unveiled a €50 billion proposal for Ukraine (in grants and loans over three years) as part of its EU budget review, which the Council and Parliament will now need to discuss and decide upon. The EU along with several international financial institutions signed agreements worth over €800 million to mobilize private investment for Ukraine. And over 500 firms signed the Ukraine Business Compact committing to supporting Ukraine’s reconstruction. The next conference will convene again in Berlin in 2024.Continue Reading Ukraine’s Reconstruction

There is a flurry of new EU initiatives to regulate the metaverse. Last week, the European Commission launched a public consultation (open until May 3, 2023) to “develop a vision for emerging virtual worlds (e.g. metaverses), based on respect for digital rights and EU laws and values” such that “open, interoperable and innovative virtual worlds … can be used safely and with confidence by the public and businesses.” This initiative follows closely on another EU public consultation on allocating costs of expanding network infrastructure (open until May 19, 2023). As explained by the EU’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, the increased data required by new technologies such as the metaverse necessitate transforming the underlying digital infrastructure. Separately, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen launched last September a non-legislative initiative on the metaverse. Similarly, the European Parliament is also working on its own-initiative report on opportunities, risk and policy implications for the metaverse.

As EU officials grapple with potential regulatory constraints as well as policy building blocks for the metaverse, they will need to address issues common across the globe: how to take advantage of the technological inflection point offered by the metaverse, while ensuring competition, privacy, and cybersecurity, among the many legal topics raised by the metaverse.

Metaverse Prospects

This rapidly increasing regulatory attention is unsurprising as the metaverse is estimated to generate up to $5 trillion in global market impact by 2030 and already in 2022, investments into the metaverse doubled compared to the previous year, reaching over $120 billion. As a multifaceted and complex digital ecosystem, the metaverse provides a wide array of investment opportunities as, in principle, nearly anything done physically could be done meta.Continue Reading Regulating the Metaverse in Europe

Funding incentives under the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) to transition to a clean energy economy are unleashing opportunities for key U.S. allies and partners around the world. In particular, tax credits exceeding 10% of the price of average electric vehicle (EV) sold in the United States are leading to new investments in Mexico and Canada, and have triggered high-level political negotiations from U.S. partners such as the European Union and Japan.

IRA Tax Credits for EV Critical Minerals and Battery Components

Under the IRA, EVs and batteries produced in North America (including Mexico and Canada) may qualify for significant tax breaks. Partial tax breaks are also available for EVs with batteries utilizing critical minerals extracted or processed in countries with which the U.S. has a free trade agreement (FTA).

As we previously discussed in greater technical detail, the IRA amended the Clean Vehicle Credit under section 30D of the U.S. tax code to provide a $7,500 consumer tax credit for the purchase of a qualified vehicle such as an EV. This consists of $3,750 for vehicles meeting the “critical minerals” requirements and $3,750 for those meeting the “battery components” requirements.

  • Under the critical minerals requirements, a share of critical minerals contained in the battery of a qualified vehicle must have beenextracted or processed in the U.S. or in a country with which the U.S. has an FTA, or recycled in North America. The applicable share is at least 40 percent for vehicles placed in service in 2023, and increasing by 10% per year until reaching 80% for vehicles placed in services after 2026.
  • Under the battery components requirements, final assembly must have occurred in North America and the percentage of the value of the components contained in such battery that were manufactured or assembled in North America must be equal to or greater than the “applicable percentage,” i.e., “60% for 2024 and 2025 vehicles, and going up 10% per year till past 2028 at 100%.”

Continue Reading Global Spotlight: the IRA’s Implications for Key U.S. Allies

On 6 October 2022, the Council of the European Union adopted a Regulation on an emergency intervention to address high energy prices (the “Regulation”).  The Regulation was published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 7 October. The Regulation has three main elements:

  1. A requirement to reduce electricity consumption by 5% in peak hours;
  2. A measure to return the excess revenues or profits of energy companies to the individual Member States; and
  3. The allocation of proceeds to customers to alleviate retail electricity prices and an extension to Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) of the categories of beneficiaries of a possible Member State intervention in the retail price.

The Regulation’s market intervention is exceptional (albeit in response to an extraordinary geopolitical market disruption).  It will have widespread positive and negative impacts for energy market sellers and buyers.  These circumstances may provoke a range of disputes, transaction (re)structurings or additional compliance obligations that will require expert advice and understanding of the details of the Regulation.

Reduction in electricity consumption

EU Member States will endeavour to reach an overall 10% reduction in electricity consumption by all consumers.  The benchmark against which that reduction will be measured is the average of gross electricity consumption in the corresponding months of the reference period, i.e. from 1 November to 31 March in the five preceding years, starting from 2017.  In addition, in order to reduce retail prices and improve supply security, Member States are obliged to deliver a 5% reduction of electricity consumption during peak hours, (defined as the hours of the day where day-ahead wholesale electricity prices are expected to be the highest; gross electricity consumption is expected to be the highest; or gross consumption of electricity generated from sources other than renewable sources is expected to be the highest).  These measures will apply from 1 December 2022 until 31 March 2023.Continue Reading EU Emergency Action on Energy

On September 15, 2022, the European Commission published a draft regulation that sets out cybersecurity requirements for “products with digital elements” (PDEs) placed on the EU market—the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). The Commission has identified that cyberattacks are increasing in the EU, with an estimated global annual cost of €5.5 trillion. The CRA aims to strengthen the security of PDEs and imposes obligations that cover:

  1. the planning, design, development, production, delivery and maintenance of PDEs;
  2. the prevention and handling of cyber vulnerabilities; and
  3. the provision of cybersecurity information to users of PDEs.

The CRA also imposes obligations to report any actively exploited vulnerability as well as any incident that impacts the security of a PDE to ENISA within 24 hours of becoming aware of it.

The obligations apply primarily to manufacturers of PDEs, which include entities that develop or manufacture PDEs as well as entities that outsource the design, development and manufacturing to a third party. Importers and distributors of PDEs also need to ensure that the products comply with CRA’s requirements.Continue Reading EU Publishes Draft Cyber Resilience Act