Berlin – ESI on overcoming risks to Europe’s future

26 November 2025
Gerald speaking at the CVC Summit. Photo: CVC | Open Innovation Summit
Gerald speaking at the CVC Summit. Photo: CVC | Open Innovation Summit

ESI’s Gerald Knaus gave a speech to at the CVC Open Innovation Summit in Berlin. The CVC serves as a meeting space for senior corporate leaders meet to learn about global challenges. Gerald’s speech was the keynote for the summit’s session “Geopolitics & Strategic Risk – Europe’s Future.”

In his speech, Gerald began by reminding the audience that since the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe has seen a paradox where the continent has experienced both tremendous social prosperity in its interior and regular conflicts on its periphery. NATO and the EU have had unparalleled success transforming Western Europe from an area of fierce conflict into one in which internal conflict is now unthinkable and human rights are firmly anchored. At the same time, Eastern and Southeastern Europe have shown how nationalism and Russian imperialism are a continued danger.

Increasingly, Gerald argued, these two dangers are once again threatening the whole of Europe. To preserve its imperial might, Russia has started wars and sought to provoke social conflict on issues such as migration. This has been of immense benefit to nationalists in Europe; the nationalist far-right is on the ascent, with parties such as the AfD or RN topping election polls across the continent. Looking to the future, Gerald stated that it is now more important than ever that we use all the tools at our disposal to highlight both the historic successes of the EU and NATO as well as the repeated destruction caused by Putin and far-right nationalism.