Berlin – ESI at the Urania: Europe has made great progress and faces great challenges

18 September 2025
Gerald Participates in the Panel at Urania
Gerald Participates in the Panel at Urania, Photo: flickr/Ondre

ESI’s Gerald Knaus spoke at a panel at Urania Berlin, a prominent cultural centre promoting dialogue and exchange between science, culture, politics, and an ever-more-diverse society. There, he spoke about the findings in his new book, “Welches Europea brauchen wir?”.

Gerald looked back at Europe’s development since the end of the Second World War, describing a period marked by both extraordinary prosperity and significant crises. From this history, he highlighted two central insights.

The first is that European integration has served as an unprecedentedly successful peace-building project. Even though conflicts have erupted on Europe’s edges – from the Balkans in the 1990s to the current war in Ukraine – relations within the European Union have been transformed, with countries that were once adversaries, such as Germany and Denmark, now cooperating closely. The second insight concerns the role of transatlantic security guarantees. According to Gerald, NATO’s deterrence has secured the EU’s Eastern flank, allowing countries including Poland and the Baltics to experience unprecedented stability and growth. In light of this, he argued that Europe should continue deepening cooperation with its neighbours while strengthening its shared defence capacity.

Gerald nonetheless cautioned that the European project faces greater challenges today than at any point since the Cold War. Putin, Trump, and other illiberal forces aim to undermine the European order by reviving nationalist divisions and instability. This effort, he argued, goes beyond conventional warfare and includes hybrid warfare to destabilise Europe politically. In particular, Gerald pointed to Russia’s missile strikes on western and central Ukraine as clear attempts to instigate mass-migration towards Europe, with the ultimate aim to benefit far-right, nationalist parties such as the AfD in Germany and the FPÖ in Austria, whose election would put all the gains of European integration at major risk. For Gerald, this makes it all the more important for supporters of European cooperation to speak confidently about what the EU and Euro-Atlantic integration have achieved, approaching today’s challenges with resolve and optimism rather than pessimism or nostalgia.

At the panel’s conclusion, Gerald discussed the book with interested audience members.