The Global Policy Center (GPC), the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Madrid (FES) have launched the Madrid and Barcelona Future of Europe Debates project.
Russia´s invasion of Ukraine and countries positioning towards it alternated dynamics in wider Europe. Following Ukraine´s application for EU membership right after the start of the war, discussions on the future of enlargement policy and neighbourhood policy are back on the political agenda of the European Union. Coupled with critical elections all around the world, including in the United States, India, Mexico, and South Africa, 2024 presents a unique opportunity to discuss not only the internal affairs of the European Union´s enlargement, EU reform, European Parliament elections´;but also to connect them to the EU´s role in the world. The interconnectedness between what is internal and external makes the Future of Europe´s debate more important than ever.
The core aim of the partnership is to contribute to informed policymaking. Thus, this project targets the participation of decision-makers in roundtables and the dissemination of research results. The target group for the project is multifaceted, including think tanks, scholars, national and European policymakers, and the general public. This project will consist of three sessions, putting together a solid corpus of reflections that contributes to the debate on the future of Europe.
The first session, on February 15, 2024, in Madrid, tackled the issue of EU enlargement and institutional reform.
In May 2024, in Barcelona, the discussion will focus on the European Parliament elections.
The third session, in October 2024, will explore the role of Europe in the world moving forward by analysing the elections in different countries, including India, South Africa, and the US.