Sylvie Goulard

Sylvie Goulard has been Professor of Practice in Global Affairs, with a particular focus on sustainability, green finance and geopolitics, at SDA Bocconi School of Management since October 2023.

She served as a Member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2017, as France’s Minister of the Armed Forces, and as Deputy Governor of the Banque de France from 2018 to 2022.

At the European Parliament, she was a member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, where she acted as rapporteur on several legislative files concerning the revision of the Stability and Growth Pact, the establishment of the new supervisory authorities and the rules governing the resolution of financial institutions introduced in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. She also chaired the parliamentary intergroup on combating poverty.

At the Banque de France, she was particularly involved in international and European affairs, including the work of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, the G7 and G20 finance tracks, the International Monetary Fund, the Financial Stability Board and the OECD. She chaired the Risk Committee and was responsible for the Bank’s Research Department. She was also actively engaged in sustainable finance, chairing the Banque de France’s Strategic Committee on Sustainable Finance and serving as co-chair of a global Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) task force focusing on environmental issues.

She currently chairs the Deutsch-Französisches Institut in Ludwigsburg, Germany, and is a member of the Board of the Munich Security Conference, one of the world’s leading annual forums on defence and security.

She co-chairs an international working group established by France and the United Kingdom to support the development of new financial instruments for the protection and restoration of nature. She is also a member of the Board of the Oceanographic Institute of Monaco.

A graduate of Sciences Po and the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), she studied law. During her time at the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs, she focused in particular on European integration and Franco-German relations.

From 2001 to 2004, she served as political adviser to Romano Prodi, then President of the European Commission.

Her book L’Europe pour les Nuls (First, 2007) received the European Book Prize. Her other publications include La democrazia in Europa (Flammarion and Rizzoli, 2012), co-authored with Mario Monti, and L’Europe enfla si bien qu’elle creva (Tallandier, 2024), which examines the future enlargement of the European Union. The latter was published in Italy by Il Mulino under the title Grande da morire, with a foreword by Romano Prodi (2025).

In 2026, Egea published her book Il costo del cinismo, which explores the challenges that climate change and biodiversity loss pose to society and businesses.