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Our Mission

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 Future Europe Initiative 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 Initiative seeks to understand change in Europe, galvanize leadership, and forge a strategy of renewal.

Overview

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, however, the core principles that defined the effort to build a more united Europe are threatened by economic stagnation, external and internal security challenges, massive migrant and refugee flows, and sharp political divisions both within and among countries. Detractors from these principles, whether authoritarians, terrorists, or nihilistic non-state actors, seek strategic advantage at this time of distraction.

The Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative is premised on the belief that the United States has an enormous strategic stake in Europe’s future, and in a coherent and cohesive Atlantic community. Vision, leadership, and sustainable strategies are needed to protect and bolster this unique partnership as a force for good in the world.

Our Focus

• 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.
• Building a Europe, whole, free, and at peace by restoring trust in the European project, confronting backsliding, integrating the peripheries, and developing a long-term Russia strategy.
• Renewing NATO and developing a more credible European defense pillar.
• Galvanizing Europe on global challenges ranging from the wider Middle East and North Africa to the Arctic, the Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.
• Building a transatlantic consensus on issues of global consequence, such as energy markets and supplies, international financial flows, climate change, cyber security, and disruptive 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.
• Developing the next generation of American and European, including Russian, leaders.