Ivan Krastev

• We describe the current moment as a crisis, but crises imply resolution — a return to stability on the other side. What if what we are living through is not a crisis but a permanent transition, with no guaranteed destination?
• The fracture has not affected all countries equally — some are losing the order they built, some are constructing a new one, and some are calculating how to profit from the space between the two. Is Europe positioned to shape what comes next, or merely to respond to it?
• If the leaders in this room had to identify one thing that must be preserved from the collapsing order and one thing that must be released, what would those things be?

The panellists used this session to challenge the terms of conventional debate about Europe’s decline, arguing that the continent's apparent weaknesses — fragmentation, regulatory complexity, asymmetric threat perceptions across member states — are also sources of resilience that more centralised powers cannot replicate. The panel was unsparing about Europe's self-inflicted vulnerabilities: household savings flowing into American markets, capital markets that remain nationally fragmented despite decades of effort, procurement and regulatory cycles too slow to match Ukraine's battlefield innovation tempo, and a demographic trajectory that no government has found the political courage to address honestly. Ivan Krastev offered the session's sharpest reframe: the problem is not which answer Europe chooses but that it keeps asking the same questions, and genuine transformation requires changing the questions themselves. The session closed with a shared forecast: the strategic error Europe will most regret in ten years is not military unreadiness but the failure to secure control over its own data.

Livestream Link:  https://youtube.com/live/tlzX8it_OV0?feature=share

• Does Europe have clarity on what power actually means today, and what would it take to develop a coherent strategy that spans both its traditional strengths and the new domains where dominance is being decided?
• What leverage does Europe still genuinely possess — economic, diplomatic, technological, and values-based — and how can it be translated into strategic relevance rather than just regulatory clout?
• How can the EU overcome its internal fragmentation to achieve the scale, speed, and unity that the new global power competition demands?
• What would a genuine model of pooled sovereignty look like in practice?
• How can Europe build partnerships grounded in mutual capability rather than dependency, and what does strategic autonomy require beyond declarations?