David O'Sullivan, EU Ambassador: Greece, Britain and the Future of the EU

The new Ambassador of the European Union to the United States, David O’Sullivan, will talk to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council over dinner on May 26th about the serious challenges facing the EU, including the potential of Greece abandoning the euro and the UK separately leaving the EU - Grexit followed by Brexit. He will also talk about the crisis of the huge immigration wave from North Africa to Europe and the ongoing tension with Russia.

Even as top EU officials work to get financial aid for Greece, doubts are increasing that the new left-leaning government in Athens will make the reforms necessary to stay in the euro zone. The talk now is of a Plan B that would help to mitigate the economic and political fallout should Greece abandon the euro. Meanwhile there are longer term uncertainties over Britain’s position in the EU - the reelection of British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron last week brings with it his promise to hold a referendum by 2017 on continued British membership of the European body. As if that were not enough to worry about, Europe faces an escalating crisis over the reported 1 million migrants who are amassing on the southern shores of the Mediterranean in an attempt to reach European soil: hundreds have already died as their crowded boats have floundered in the sea.

Prior to his appointment in Washington, Ambassador O’Sullivan served from 2011 to 2014 as the Chief Operating Officer of the EU’s diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service: essentially the Foreign Ministry for the EU. Before that he was Director General for Trade from 2005 to 2010 and Secretary General of the European Commission from 2000 to 2005. He started his career in the Irish Foreign Service, and spent four years in the EU Commission’s Delegation in Tokyo in the 1980s. O’Sullivan has a degree in economics and sociology from Trinity College Dublin, and did postgraduate studies at the European College in Bruges.