At the COP26 summit in Glasgow, world leaders agreed to intensify efforts to fight climate change, signed pledges to protect forests and reduce methane emissions, and negotiated new approaches to climate adaptation and justice. This event will reflect on changes European leaders should initiate to ensure a fair and effective climate transition.

To fulfill its ambition of becoming an effective geopolitical power, the EU should place ecological security and diplomacy at the heart of its foreign and security policy. This approach should entail practical and innovative strategies that pursue systemic regeneration at home and abroad.

To effectively mobilize their citizens on climate action, EU leaders will need to go beyond the existing soft consensus that climate change is happening and put in place strategic, country-specific action plans.

For the European Union to take the lead in global climate action, it will need to ensure a fair and inclusive transition with deeper democratic engagement.

Any paralysis on EU foreign policy regarding the union’s borderlands would be strategically and geopolitically shortsighted.

In the lead up to the Sibiu Summit, where European leaders will meet on May 9 to discuss the future of Europe, it is time to refocus the debate on the issues that truly matter.

This report is a rallying cry for Europeans to pull together and mobilize the EU’s assets to manage the three biggest changes of our times.

The next EP elections will likely end big party dominance and create genuine democratic space. But, ultimately, the functioning of the EU hinges on the success of the populist radical right.

The populist vision is rising in Europe. To respond successfully, liberals need to expose its flaws and offer new approaches to economic insecurity and social change.

Authoritarian trends in Hungary and Poland threaten the EU more than Brexit does because they undermine the union’s legal foundations. Other EU governments need to defend the rule of law more actively.