Rest in peace, Paul

At Public Digital we are deeply saddened to hear of the death of Paul Hofheinz, our friend and founder of the Lisbon Council.

My colleagues and I at PD have worked closely with the Lisbon Council for some years. Both Tom and I were honoured to be made fellows in 2019. Since then Public Digital and Lisbon Council have jointly met with European leaders on several occasions at Berlaymont and within the Commission; I presented their Jean Monnet lecture on ‘Co-Creation’ and ‘Design Thinking:’ The Next Frontier. We have worked together across European technology and policy, including the 2021 development of new European benchmarks for assessing the usability of digital government services.

Paul and his wife Ann founded the Brussels-based policy and publishing centre in 2003. It is named after the Lisbon Strategy, the EU’s commitment to make the region the world’s foremost knowledge-based economy. Taking the Commission at its word, Paul relentlessly probed and challenged European politicians and public sector leaders, and presented the best of the world’s technology and policy brains to stimulate regulation and policy across Europe.

Through our years of collaboration, Paul’s intellect, wisdom and desire for Europe to step up its game in technology and digital services were ever-present. His encyclopaedic knowledge of European, Russian and American policy and history made every conversation a lesson in realpolitik and a reminder of the perils of isolationism. In the late 1980s and through the 1990s he predicted the economic and political challenges facing Russia following the Gorbachev reforms. As a WSJ journalist, he shone a light on the internal frictions within the European project.

A journalist (for Fortune, Time, WSJ and other publications), researcher, policy-maker and entrepreneur, Paul was a polymath. The legacy of his publishing and speaking is outstanding. His output ranged from AI, the start-up economy, global trade, economic reform and European politics – all infused with his trademark kindness, curiosity and focus on democratic outcomes for the community.

A proud American, his commitment to peace, democracy and European values were very much evident in his last public event. On 8th April this year Paul hosted Stripe founder John Collison at the Solvay Library, next to the European Parliament – a historic place of letters for Europe’s great scientists including Curie, Bohr and Einstein. His ‘Scaling Europe Summit’ event brought together technology leaders and European bureaucrats to explore how Europe can use technology to drive economic growth and improve social outcomes. It was an honour to spend an hour with him in a side room before he left for the stage with a pledge to keep fighting his cancer so he could spend more time with his precious children.

Several times over the years I heard Paul cheerfully remind political leaders and technology proponents that ‘No man is an island’ – without resorting to the following lines of Donne’s poem: ‘Every man is a piece of the continent.’

We need him now more than ever before.