SAVE THE DATE - At the Table or on the Menu? Europe, Middle Powers and International Order

The full agenda and speaker line-up will be available soon!

Concept Note

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 are used as instruments of coercion. The second is the possibility for middle powers – understood as influential players in the international system, yet aware that their interests lie in a rules-based order – to work together to reform and strengthen international law and multilateral cooperation. 

The debate about middle powers is not new. When the global cleavage was marked by the clash between a democratic Global West and an authoritarian Global East, middle powers were seen as being those countries in the Global South that refused to take sides, presenting their non- or multi-alignment as the way forward. In this configuration of the international system, against the backdrop of authoritarian Russia’s invasion of democratic Ukraine, Europe was in its comfort zone, standing on one side of the global divide. 

But this no longer seems to fully capture international realities. As the world fractures in a “third world war in pieces” as late Pope Francis suggested, with aspiring empires competing and colluding on the world stage, the meaning of middle powers has fundamentally changed. Middle powers may be democracies, but could also be non-democratic or hybrid regimes. However, they do share a fundamental belief that the basic norms of international law – starting with the UN Charter and its tenets of sovereignty and territorial integrity – and multilateral cooperation are essential to address the world’s most pressing challenges.   

For Europe, the prospect of a world in which middle powers acquire and assert their voice is not an external question. It is internal and existential.

But Europe – including small and medium-sized states, as well as European and Euro-Atlantic institutions – faces a strategic bifurcation. It can become a colony of aspiring empires: dependent on others for security, technology, energy, industrial capacity, financial infrastructure and geopolitical protection. Or it can stand united as a middle power, capable of working with states, international organisations and transnational players to rebuild a global order based on rules and cooperation. 

This choice matters beyond Europe. If Europe accepts strategic dependency, the world risks becoming a system of competing empires, coercive dependencies and transactional players. If Europe succeeds, it can offer a different model: an open middle-power politics based on cooperation, autonomy and mutual restraint.

Yet Europe cannot lead this middle-power moment through rhetoric alone. Strategic autonomy requires institutions, investments and innovation, not only abstract ambition. In areas like the economy and trade, strides forward have been made. The EU’s recently signed agreements with India, Mercosur, Australia, Indonesia and Mexico are testament to this. In security and defence, steps are belatedly being taken by individual states or groups of countries. However, neither a European pillar within NATO nor an EU defence union has so far produced the level of autonomy required by the current strategic moment. In areas like the energy transition, the EU used to be a global leader. It has since partly lost its way, amidst a tide of climate-sceptic far-right nationalism. However, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East should have reminded Europeans that the continent’s energy security requires a green transition. Finally, in the area of technology, and in particular AI, Europe lags far behind. It is here that the quest for autonomy from both the US and China is most arduous and creative ways should be sought to leverage the asymmetric advantages Europe still has. 

The IEP Annual Event will examine how Europe can turn the middle-power moment into an opportunity to rebuild global order across the main domains in which strategic autonomy is decided, namely: 1) energy and climate, 2) defence and security, 3) trade and economic coercion, and 4) technology and industrial policy.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the energy crisis, the weaponisation of supply chains and the weakening of multilateral institutions all point to the same underlying question: can Europe turn vulnerability, building resilience and autonomy? Can Europe help build a world in which middle powers move from fragmentation to a revised and revamped order?

Its answers will help determine not only Europe’s future, but also whether the middle-power can live up to its potential, contributing to a more open, plural and non-imperial world.