The UK-EU summit last month was an important step towards closer co-operation and a strategic partnership. Both sides now need to turn that ambition into detailed sectoral negotiations with a clear timescale.
The European Competitiveness Fund could be a powerful tool to improve the EU's economic security. But the proposal needs reform to avoid pitting security and growth against each other.
The EU should reinforce the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to stave off a destabilising financing crunch for many emerging and developing economies.
Both elections tested democratic resilience and, while confirming the status quo on most EU policies, showed that anti-establishment sentiment is here to stay.
Integrating EU candidate countries into the EU ETS would incentivise them to decarbonise their emissions-intensive electricity mix and heavy industries. Gradual integration would soften the economic impact of a high carbon price.
The EU’s efforts to forge a common approach that promotes peace and human rights in the Israel-Palestine conflict have failed. As the EU rethinks its broader Middle East policy, a new approach cannot wait.
The Defence Readiness 2030 Roadmap seeks to accelerate and inject coherence into the EU’s defence build-up. Its success depends on sustained funding and political will.
China’s trade and industrial policy, its monopoly on many critical technologies and its geopolitical ambitions make it a genuinely systemic rival to the EU and the UK. They need to work together to defend their interests.
The Helsinki Final Act played a key role in ending the Cold War, but the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), to which it gave birth, has progressively been sidelined in Europe’s security architecture.
