Europe at the Crossroads
IEP Bocconi’s Research Agenda for 2026–27: an essay by Director Paloma Lopez-Garcia
A new chapter for IEP
When I took up the directorship of the Institute for European Policymaking (IEP) at Bocconi University in June 2026, I inherited something genuinely valuable: three years of rigorous, policy-relevant research produced by a talented and committed team, a growing network of world-class fellows, two successful annual events, a flagship innovation report and a reputation as a place where serious multidisciplinary thinking meets European policy ambition.
That mission is inspired by the example of our Honorary President Mario Monti, whose life in public service stands as a model of what it means to put rigorous analysis at the service of better policy for Europe.
IEP is now entering its fourth year. The question is no longer whether it can produce good work, it clearly can, but whether it can produce good work at the scale and with the visibility that its ambitions require.
Scaling up impact is not just about doing more of the same. It requires a more structured approach to how the institute organises its research agenda, how it connects to Bocconi’s extraordinary faculty and its network of fellows, and how it ensures that its output reaches the right audiences at the right moments.
This essay is my first public statement of how I intend to take that step. It explains the new operating model we are introducing, the research agenda we have chosen for this cycle, and what you, our subscribers, partners, fellows and readers, can expect from IEP over the coming year.
A new way of working
The change in how IEP operates rests on two elements. The first is that impact at scale requires predictability. The most influential policy institutes in Europe are recognisable not just because of individual pieces of work but because of their rhythm: you know what to expect from them, when to expect it, and why it matters.
The second is that sustained analytical quality requires systematically tapping the full depth of the ecosystem in which IEP is uniquely embedded. Bocconi is one of Europe’s leading research universities, with world-class faculty across economics, law, political science and management. IEP’s greatest asset is its position at the heart of that community.
The new model is designed to activate it fully, connecting the institute’s policy agenda to rigorous, cutting-edge scholarship. Predictability builds the brand; Bocconi’s research depth gives it substance.
IEP’s new model introduces an annual cycle organised around a small number of focus topics chosen each year. These topics will change from cycle to cycle, responding to what is most urgent and where IEP can make the most distinctive contribution. The intellectual anchor of each cycle is the annual event, held every November.
Work begins before the event: we develop the questions and produce initial analysis that serves as the foundation for the event’s panels. The event itself is where those questions are sharpened in public, contested by the best thinkers and practitioners we can bring together, and opened up into the sub-questions and follow-up lines of inquiry that will occupy the institute for the months that follow.
This cumulative work is brought together in two forms: a concise, accessible synthesis for a broad policy audience, and a longer, more comprehensive topic-specific report showcasing the multidisciplinary depth of IEP’s approach, presented at an IEP event when relevant audiences are most receptive.
The accumulated expertise will also be available to our audiences in different formats across our communication channels throughout the year.
The annual cycle 2026-27
The global order has ruptured. Great-power rivalry, war, economic coercion, technological dependency, energy insecurity and protectionism are on the rise, while climate change unleashes growing disruption across the world. International law and multilateral organisations appear unable to reverse this tide.
In his Davos speech in January 2026, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney captured this shift with unusual clarity: the rules-based order sustained by American hegemony has become a fiction.
Ahead of us lie two options. The first is a dark law of the jungle, in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must: tariffs, financial infrastructure, supply chains, energy dependencies and digital platforms weaponised as instruments of coercion. The second is the possibility for middle powers to work together to reform and strengthen international law and multilateral cooperation.
In this context, Europe faces a strategic bifurcation. This choice matters beyond Europe.
If Europe accepts strategic dependency, the world risks becoming a system of competing empires and transactional regionalism. If Europe succeeds, it can offer a different model: a middle-power politics based on cooperation, autonomy and mutual restraint.
But how Europe frames its own response matters enormously.
In Brussels, the new global disorder has produced a reflex toward asserting EU sovereignty understood as the capacity to go it alone, to behave, in other words, as a great power rather than a middle one.
As IEP Senior Fellow and former Director Daniel Gros has argued, this instinct is misguided: “Instead of emphasising the EU’s ability to go it alone, the EU should grasp the opportunity to lead the large group of like-minded middle powers that are looking for their place in this world without a benevolent hegemon.” The EU cannot replace the United States as global hegemon. But, as Gros puts it, “it can offer something more useful for the present moment: leadership without domination.”
Yet Europe cannot lead this middle-power moment through rhetoric alone. Strategic autonomy requires institutions, investments and innovation, and the gaps are real and consequential across the four domains that will define whether Europe is at the table or on the menu. In trade, what does it mean in practice for Europe to move from passive rule-taker to active architect of new frameworks, and what are the costs and trade-offs of a “made with Europe” strategy versus a purely defensive “made in Europe” approach?
In technology, where should Europe place its bets in the AI race, given its genuine strengths in regulation and in specific domains, and how can it avoid being left with oversight of a technological landscape it did not shape?
In security and defence, what does rearmament at the required scale actually cost, how should it be financed, and what institutional architecture, including potentially a European Security Council, can transform ad hoc coalitions into durable strategic capacity?
And in energy and climate, how can Europe reconcile the green transition with energy security, industrial competitiveness and social cohesion, at a moment when the political sustainability of that transition is under serious pressure?
These are the questions that define IEP’s research agenda for this cycle. We come to them with two lenses that are essential and too rarely combined.
The first is a policy lens. IEP’s aim is not simply to describe the challenges Europe faces, but to illuminate the choices and trade-offs involved in addressing them, and to put the best available evidence in the hands of those who have to make the decisions.
The second is a multidisciplinary lens. The world does not organise itself by academic discipline, and neither do the problems Europe faces. Trade and economic coercion is simultaneously an economics question, a legal question and a political economy question. Energy and climate connects macroeconomics, climate science, industrial policy and geopolitics in ways that no single discipline can address alone.
Defence and security is inseparable from public finance, macroeconomics and industrial organisation. Technology and industrial policy sits at the intersection of innovation economics, regulatory theory and strategic studies.
IEP’s position inside Bocconi makes this multidisciplinary approach not just an aspiration but a practical reality. So does our diverse and distinguished community of fellows, who bring to these questions direct experience of European institutions, diplomacy, central banking, international law and strategic affairs.
The 2026 IEP’s Annual Event: At the table or on the menu?
The intellectual anchor for this cycle is IEP’s annual event on 18 November 2026: At the Table or on the Menu? Europe, Middle Powers and International Order.
The title captures the choice Europe faces with uncomfortable directness. To be at the table is to shape the rules, build the coalitions and define the terms on which the international order is rebuilt. To be on the menu is to be an object of others’ decisions.
The event brings together leading thinkers, senior policymakers, business leaders and academics for a full day of structured debate designed as a genuine intellectual exercise: each panel will frame the most important unresolved questions in its domain, surface the sharpest disagreements, and identify what rigorous analysis most needs to establish.
A high-level horizontal panel and a keynote speaker will address the overarching question: can Europe turn the middle-power moment into a strategic opportunity? Four topic panels will examine each specific domain where strategic autonomy is most immediately at stake: trade, technology, defence and security, and energy and green transition.
The first two panels address the external economic and technological dimensions of European autonomy.
On trade and economic coercion, the central question is whether Europe can move from passive rule-taker to active architect of new frameworks, and whether it can do so in a way that builds coalitions rather than alienates the partners it needs most.
The risk of a purely defensive response -asserting sovereignty through trade protection and “made in Europe” preferences- is that it closes off the coalition-building potential that gives Europe its greatest lever. What institutional forms could this take, and what are the costs and distributional consequences of the different strategic choices available?
On technology and industrial policy, the question is how Europe can build genuine technological sovereignty in a world where the AI race is being run primarily between the United States and China, leaving Europe at risk of regulatory strength without production capacity.
Where does Europe’s dependency bite hardest -across cloud and compute infrastructure, large language models, or the application layer where it is actually competitive?
Where can it lead through its genuine comparative advantages, whether in AI regulation, multilingual models, biomedical intelligence, semiconductor design, or critical raw materials? And what industrial policy architecture is needed to build on those strengths without distorting the single market or triggering retaliation?
The second two panels address the security and environmental foundations of European autonomy.
On defence and security, the gap between European ambition and European capacity has never been more visible.
IEP’s distinctive contribution is to bring a multidisciplinary lens to questions too often addressed in purely strategic terms: what are the required capabilities and what are the best strategies to acquire them, what does rearmament at the required scale actually cost, how should it be financed without crowding out investment in the green and digital transitions, and what is the appropriate institutional infrastructure given Europe’s existing commitments with other institutions?
As IEP Senior Fellow Nathalie Tocci has argued, collective action on security has repeatedly emerged outside existing institutions. A European Security Council could provide the permanent framework that preserves that momentum, but its feasibility, design and cost require rigorous analysis.
On energy and climate, the question is how Europe can reconcile energy security, the green transition, industrial competitiveness and social cohesion, imperatives that often appear to pull in different directions but ultimately depend on one another.
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have made clear that energy security and the green transition are not alternatives. Yet the transition faces its most serious political challenge since its inception, amid concerns about competitiveness and the uneven distribution of costs across member states and social groups.
What partnerships with energy-rich middle powers are strategically viable? What fiscal, industrial and social instruments can make the transition both effective and politically sustainable?
An Invitation
IEP is still a small institute but it is entrusted with a large ambition.
We cannot achieve that ambition alone, we need the engagement of the full Bocconi community, the active participation of our fellows, the collaboration of external researchers and practitioners, and the readership and critical engagement of all members of our community like you.
The annual event on 18 November is the moment when this cycle’s work becomes a public conversation. I hope to see many of you there.
Paloma Lopez-Garcia is Director of the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University. IEP’s 2026 Annual Event — “At the Table or on the Menu? Europe, Middle Powers and International Order” — takes place on 18 November 2026 at SDA Bocconi, Milan. Further information and registration at iep.unibocconi.eu
IEP Bocconi does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.
