Can you imagine Europe playing a key role in the world in 2057, 100 years after the Treaty of Rome was signed? And by key role, I mean having a seat at the table and the agency to change things for the better, being a strong force for a liveable planet, a good future for all of humanity, and ensuring its own population and trade partners are prospering? Reading this in 2026, you will most likely have some doubts – be it regarding declining competitiveness, changing demographics, political fragmentation, or the latest developments in AI. There is a clear path towards a strong Europe, using its weight to build a better tomorrow, yet there are a thousand reasons why this endeavor might fail, and Europe would fall into oblivion. But the underlying problem is an intangible one, and quite solvable, I’m convinced. Let’s start from the beginning, though.

The world order is shifting rapidly, and modern geopolitical strategy seems to be becoming rougher and more Darwinian once more. Although the end of history was once declared imminent1, it appears to have relapsed into a more turbulent state than ever. Several generational questions loom on the horizon: Where will the developments in AI lead us? Will we all live in abundance while our jobs are automated by AI and robots (in which case there would have to be a massive redistribution of wealth and financial means, which is hard to imagine without major societal disruption along the way), or will some elements of Citrini’s more dystopic outlook2 come to pass? Is this even our most severe challenge right now, or should we rather re-focus on climate change and put all available resources to work to stop a looming catastrophe? And is it possible to navigate into a future without major wars between superpowers, given that we currently all take part in a global arms race and already see the number of complicated multi-stakeholder conflicts on the rise, which we thought were a relic of the past?

The future is never certain; that is a core quality of being human.3 But amid these major inflection points, the future can feel particularly daunting. The danger comes from uncertainty turning into hopelessness and avoidance. Many Europeans feel increasingly hopeless about their personal future in light of AI-driven disruption of the job market and challenges such as fragile pay-as-you-go pension and social welfare systems that come under pressure as demographics change and growth slows down, while political stagnation and the lack of unifying positive visions for the future fuel a new wave of populism. And in a time when one crisis follows another, the media and society at large are avoiding the harder, longer-term questions, such as how to mitigate climate change. All of these problems seem to be amplified in the European environment, where deteriorating competitiveness (things have moved only marginally since Draghi wrote his landmark paper in 2024) and political fragmentation create a climate of negativity. A recent study finds that in Germany, one in five young people aged 14 to 29 considers leaving the country.4 Across Europe, politicians have held fervent speeches to bring the continent back on track, but have failed to deliver results at scale. And if we follow Draghi’s analysis, the situation is dire indeed:

If Europe cannot become more productive, we will be forced to choose. We will not be able to become, at once, a leader in new technologies, a beacon of climate responsibility and an independent player on the world stage. We will not be able to finance our social model. We will have to scale back some, if not all, of our ambitions.

This is an existential challenge.

Europe’s fundamental values are prosperity, equity, freedom, peace and democracy in a sustainable environment.

The EU exists to ensure that Europeans can always benefit from these fundamental rights. If Europe can no longer provide them to its people – or has to trade off one against the other – it will have lost its reason for being.

The only way to meet this challenge is to grow and become more productive, preserving our values of equity and social inclusion. And the only way to become more productive is for Europe to radically change.5

And a strong European continent is especially important right now. Europe has its weaknesses, its double standards, its bloody history, its structural flaws. But a world with a strong European Union is a better world than one without it. As Žižek puts it:

And this is why the idea of the European Union is worth fighting for, in spite of the misery of its actual existence: in today’s global capitalist world, it offers the only model of a transnational organization with the authority to limit national sovereignty and the task to guarantee a minimum of ecological and social welfare standards. Our duty is not to humiliate ourselves as the ultimate culprits of colonialist exploitation but to fight for this part of our legacy that is important for the survival of humanity. Yes, Europe is more and more alone in the new global world, dismissed as an old, exhausted, irrelevant continent playing a secondary role in today’s geopolitical conflicts. However, as Bruno Latour recently put it: “L’Europe est seule, oui, mais seule l’Europe peut nous sauver.” Europe is alone, yes, but Europe alone can save us.6

It’s easy to think of Europe as a continent where far-right parties gain momentum, countries consider leaving the EU, member states increasingly fail to keep pace in the global economic race, and looming risks from AI disruption and climate change threaten to leave the continent behind as a museum of better times. But this doesn’t have to be the future. Europe’s biggest problems are a lack of vision, optimism, and the willingness to change. We urgently need all of these, though. To quote Žižek once more:

The united Europe is still an economic power, so it should do something it has avoided doing for years, something both Russia and the US try to prevent at any cost: to proclaim the independence of united Europe. […] Will the proclamation of European independence happen? No, in all probability – but its lack will be felt all around the world. If it does not happen, it is not because of external pressures – Europe is ultimately afraid of itself.

Indeed, Europe seems afraid of itself and inherently pessimistic about its potential for renewal and a better future. So what’s the antidote? While many things need to happen – first and foremost, developing a positive vision of the future – the core driver for all of these is a renewed European optimism.

It is a prerequisite to developing a positive vision of the future and then summoning the courage and agency to make it come true. It is necessary to realistically assess all the challenges and develop an action plan, because giving in and retreating is not an option. Europe has a unique set of values, with a serious commitment to democracy, human rights, social inclusion, and the preservation of nature and natural resources. Additionally, and contrary to newly emerging narratives from across the Atlantic and populist barroom talk, Europe also remains a serious advocate for free expression7 and personal liberty8. So if Europe wants these values to prevail and have an impact on the world, it needs a strong economic foundation and geopolitical weight. To have a seat at the table where global peace and sustainable development are negotiated, Europe needs to become a stronger, more independent global leader, forging new alliances and showing, by its own example, that this is the way to a better future, rather than an impasse.

To realize this ambition, Europe must embrace change. Domestic prosperity is the foundation of everything else. It is needed for social cohesion, to fuel all of the ambitious plans, and to stay relevant. Counterintuitively, to not live in an increasingly hyper-capitalistic, hyper-transactional, hyper-competitive world, we will have to become more competitive as a continent first9. And while optimism alone won't redesign the European economy, no serious redesign becomes politically possible without it.

So what might that look like? There are plenty of examples in history; successful economic powers have generally combined strategic state direction with market dynamism, in different proportions and with different mechanisms. The Dutch built their empire through public-private hybrid structures, where state-backed corporations pursued commercial expansion under strategic direction.10 The US, especially in its first century and again today through industrial policy, has consistently combined strategic state investment with entrepreneurial markets. Even Silicon Valley exists in large part because of decades of DARPA, NIH, and defense procurement spending.11 China, in its own way, runs the economy somewhat like a company with an OKR system – top-down government objectives matched with bottom-up key results12.

The problem isn't that Europe doesn't try, but that the attempts are fragmented across 27 member states, underfunded relative to ambition, and lacking the unified procurement and capital deployment that Draghi argues are necessary. This, on the other hand, is hindering market dynamism and motivation. Europe's path forward is not to invent an entirely new model, but rather scaling and unifying the one it already partially has: adopting Draghi’s 2024 recommendations as a top-down strategic framework (enabling a real single market, having a unified trade strategy, entering a capital markets union with a single regulator, governance reform, better coordination on joint investments in innovation and security, etc), while a bottom-up momentum of innovation and entrepreneurship gives the economy new impetus, empowered by a true single market and eased regulatory burden, strengthened European innovation & talent clusters and the unlocking of public and influx of private capital, – and fueled, at the most granular level, by European optimism.

The foundations for competitiveness are there: comprehensive education, strong science and engineering, centuries of cultural and academic institutions, and a population of about 450 million. But the biggest bottleneck is the failure to unite behind a shared positive vision of the future, to drop the patchwork of national rules and regulations, and to capitalize on shared strengths and synergies. This is good news, because a positive vision of the future can be developed, and policies can be changed. But it is bad news too: is it even possible to shift the mindset across a whole continent in the time that’s left to catch up? To collectively let go of excessive pessimism and overcome inertia? To appreciate others and what can be learned from them (e.g., how could Europe develop its own version of American Dynamism, what lessons can be learned from the Shenzhen engineering supercluster, etc.), while cultivating its own strengths? To start thinking of a glass that’s half-full instead of half-empty, of challenges instead of insurmountable problems? It will be difficult, it might be almost impossible. But for Europe, it’s not merely worth attempting, but the only path forward.

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