Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 8 hours ago

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▶️ Session Three: The world in 2040: What role for Europe?

The global order is experiencing enormous shifts - from geopolitics to international trade, from technological advance to democratic backsliding. We have entered a new era of global competition and conflict. Old power structures, assumptions and rules are increasingly being questioned, or even crumbling. Emerging new powers, new economic paradigms, and new societal norms are all driving change. With the geopolitical tectonic plates shifting, the rules-based order challenged, old alliances under pressure and new alliances being forged, and continuing warfare on European soil, has Europe’s hour arrived?

The EU is an important global player, but its influence may be put to the test by political and economic trends, and its own ability to take the initiative, make decisions and act. How important will internal political unity and agility be to achieving a global Europe? How should Europe equip itself with the necessary tools to develop an effective foreign and security policy? How can Europe navigate and help shape the new, emerging world order? How can the EU establish itself as a smart global power able to build alliances to uphold and modernise the rules-based order, pursue ‘win-win cooperation’, and address the key global challenges, acting with partners where possible and autonomously when necessary? There are different possible futures for Europe’s role in the world, and exploring possible scenarios for these will be at the heart of this session’s discussion.

Moderator:
Jim Cloos, Secretary-General, Trans-European Policy Studies Association

Speakers:
Mark Leonard, Director, European Council on Foreign Relations
Rudra Chaudhuri, Director of Carnegie India
Heather Grabbe, Senior Fellow, Bruegel