About the Europe Center

Our mission

The Europe Center promotes leadership, strategies and analysis to ensure a strong, ambitious and forward-looking transatlantic relationship.

The transatlantic relationship is America’s greatest asset. Since the Atlantic Council’s founding, Europe has been the United States’ political, economic, and security partner of first resort. North America and Europe were the most effective force globally when acting together. Together, North America and Europe laid the foundations for a liberal international order that offers the prospect of widely-shared security, prosperity, and freedom.

Today the relationship is challenged by internal and external forces. We cannot take it for granted, nor should we give in to nostalgia or be in denial of the forces affecting it: it is our objective to think anew and reshape the transatlantic relationship to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.

In a time of great power competition, rising authoritarianism and technological and environmental challenges, the Europe Center seeks to help engagement between policymakers, economic leaders and citizens on both sides of the Atlantic, promote rising leaders and develop common solutions to defend our liberal democracies.

Through cutting-edge research and high level convening, the Europe Center’s work is conducted with the strong belief that the resilience and strength of the European Union, alongside the unity of NATO, is a critical national interest of the United States.

Europe is in the midst of a historic transition, the outcome of which is of great strategic importance to the United States. The Atlantic Council’s Europe Center promotes the leadership and strategies required to bolster the vision of a strong Europe advancing a better global future in partnership with the United States. The Center seeks to understand change in Europe, galvanize leadership, and forge a strategy of renewal.

Our focus

Building a Europe, whole, free, and at peace by restoring trust in the European project, confronting backsliding and integrating the peripheries.
Developing a common strategy in great power competition to confront Russian aggression and Chinese assertiveness together.
Restoring transatlantic leadership in the global economy and bolstering the economic foundation of the transatlantic community’s international strength by advancing growth, innovation, and competition policies.
Promoting European efforts at defense integration and coordination.
Educating American citizens and policymakers on developments in the European Union and their importance for the transatlantic relationship.
Building a transatlantic consensus on issues of global consequence, such as energy markets and supplies, international financial flows, climate change, cyber security, and new technologies.
Recommitting to common values and ideals across the Atlantic and with other partners by fostering an international order characterized by rule of law, democracy, human rights, and free markets.
Bringing together the next generation of American and European leaders.