Valentin Zahrnt
Areas of expertise
- WTO Negotiations
- WTO & Civil Society
- Agricultural Policies
- Institutional Economics
- International Relations
Valentin Zahrnt is a Senior Fellow at ECIPE. He is also Director of Zahrnt Consulting & Communication, a service specialized in trade and sustainable development.
Holding a Ph.D. in international economics, his research interests are centered on two issues: the institutional functioning of the WTO (negotiations, trade policy reviews) and trade in food (WTO Agreement on Agriculture, CAP reform, sanitary and phytosanitary regulation).
Valentin Zahrnt has studied at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), the National University of Singapore, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Freiberg. Subsequently, he has conducted a post-graduate research project at the University of Geneva.
ECIPE Publications
- A Guide to CAP Reform Politics: Issues, Positions and Dynamics (ECIPE Working Paper No. 3/2011)
- Food Security and the EU's Common Agricultural Policy: Facts Against Fears (ECIPE Working Paper No. 1/2011)
- The WTO’s Trade Policy Review Mechanism: How to Create Political Will for Liberalization (ECIPE Working Paper No. 11/2009)
- Public Money for Public Goods: Winners and Losers from CAP Reform (ECIPE Working Paper No. 08/2009)
- Transparency of Complex Regulation: How Should WTO Trade Policy Reviews Deal with Sanitary and Phytosanitary Policies? (ECIPE Working Paper No. 06/2009)
- A Blueprint for Reform of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (ECIPE Working Paper No. 01/2009)
- Reforming the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy: Health Check, Budget Review, Doha Round (ECIPE Policy Brief No. 06/2008)
Other Books and Papers
- Agriculture-specific negotiations from an EU perspective (Paper for the conference on ‘Alternative Frameworks for Agricultural Trade Negotiations’, University of Adelaide, 11-12 December 2008 )
Speeches and Presentations
- How Should WTO Trade Policy Reviews Deal with SPS Policies? (Presentation at the WTO Public Forum in Geneva, 30 September 2009)
Articles, Opinion and Commentary
- Transparency of complex regulation: how should WTO trade policy reviews deal with sanitary and phytosanitary policies? (Article by Valentin Zahrnt published in World Trade Review.)
- Food security - not an EU problem (Supranational policies are hampering the fight against world hunger, argues Valentin Zahrnt in Public Service Europe.)
- For a sustainable liberalism (Valentin Zahrnt in ZEIT (in German))
- EU Food Security, the Rhetoric and Reality (Article in European Voice by Valentin Zahrnt)
- Should the UK squeeze the EU budget or lead Europe (Article by Valentin Zahrnt in European Voice.)
Media Coverage
- Vierteljahresheft liberal 2/2011 (Andreas Freytag and Valentin Zahrnt comment on the European trade strategy)
- French G20 Leadership to Focus on Commodity Prices (Valentin Zahrnt quoted in EU Observer.)
- Ohne Subvention kein Hunger (Valentin Zahrnt interviewed by the taz)
- Lebensmittel sind austauschbar (Valentin Zahrnt and Stephan von Cramon-Taubadel arguing that food security should play not role in the CAP debate (Süddeutsche Zeitung, only in print))
- Ciolos wants to link payments to environmental protection (Valentin Zahrnt quoted on EuropeanVoice.com)

