Europe’s Future Week – Special Edition

The State of the Union address and the Europe Future Forum in Warsaw come as the Commission prepares its new European Security Strategy. Welcome to this special edition of the Weekly Outlook by Visegrad Insight.

Europe likes to discuss its future in the conditional tense. This week leaves little room for that as the future is happening already today. On Sunday, a delegation of European leaders who were coming back by train from Kyiv had to be evacuated when a Russian drone hit a train just behind theirs. This incident will likely be reflected in the tone of the annual State of the Union address that Ursula von der Leyen delivers on Wednesday and typically sets the agenda for the next year. The question is whether the policy circles can catch up in their language quickly enough with reality. Precisely why the European Security Strategy, that is due by 30 September, is even more expected and will be also more scrutinised against the pressures of economic warfare and strategic communication.

Also this week, the Europe Future Forum opens in Warsaw on Monday and gathers a number of European government officials to advance next year’s policy initiatives also through the prism of democratic and economic security. Res Publica Foundation and Visegrad Insight are conveying this exclusive strategic foresight meeting to better inform the policy community in the EU and be better informed about three policy areas: democratic security, economic security and the EU enlargement process. It is an invitation-only day, opened by Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Vsevolod Chentsov and closed by a fireside chat with political and business executives. On Tuesday the stage belongs, among others, to Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, to ministers and envoys from Slovakia, Hungary, Czechia, Croatia and other European countries, and to development bankers and to strategists such as Florence Gaub of the NATO Defense College. Behind closed doors, 10 sessions work through harder questions, from Taiwan Strait chokepoints to bio-resilience.

Can Europe ramp up its defence posture by bringing civil society on board of civilian-military preparedness? How much can the next EU budget deliver on crisis readiness when the current one is already so squeezed? How to make the enlargement be seen less a favour to candidates and more an investment in Europe’s own security? And how to utilise Poland’s global posture as G20 to advance the Central European perspective on democratic and economic security?