Shortly before the half-time of the EU-funded research project, the InvigoratEU Mid-term Conference allowed for discussing initial research findings with international experts, representatives from EU institutions and European civil society. The InviogratEU findings covered the topics of European military capacities, foreign interference of third countries, social cohesion and democratisation in the EU's neighbourhood as well as the protection of critical infrastructure. In addition to these findings, some of which have already been published, while some will be published in the course of 2025, the discussions centred on the development of concrete policy recommendations for the supranational level, EU member states and candidate countries.
Starting with the question whether and if so in how far the EU’s enlargement policy can live up to its reputation of being one of the EU’s most successful foreign policies again, Prof Dr Funda Tekin, IEP Director and Scientific Lead of InvigoratEU, opened the public part of the conference. She introduced the conceptual approach of the research project along the lines of InvigoratEU's Triple R approach of ‘Reforming, Responding, Rebuilding’ and thus laid the foundation for the presentation of the initial research results on the following panels.
During the conference, most notably the debate with the decision-makers showed that InvigoratEU makes a substantial contribution to the debate on the strategic goals of EU enlargement as well as an innovative, result-orientated policy proposals in a highly dynamic geopolitical environment. The panellists on security and defence policy discussed both the need to create military capabilities in the EU as well as the historical and current hurdles as to why these have not yet been established. While the focus here was on the situation within the EU, the panel on democratisation provided an in-depth analysis of worrying developments in the EU’s neighbourhood.
The speakers on the panel on social cohesion underlined that the influence of EU enlargement policy on social cohesion is underresearched and demonstrated how InvigoratEU will make an innovative contribution in its analysis. The contributions tot he panel on critical infrastructure made it clear that infrastructure is increasingly under threat both within the EU and in the candidate countries. An EU approach to protecting it must consider the complexity of this challenge. A traditional understanding of security policy is no longer sufficient, but must be thought of in a multidimensional way and across policy areas.
To conclude the conference, Prof Dr Michael Kaeding (Professor of European Integration and European Policy at the University of Duisburg-Essen and InvigoratEU Project Coordinator) reviewed the debates and looked ahead to the upcoming work of the international consortium over the next year and a half.
In addition to the public part of the conference, a confidential exchange with representatives of EU institutions took place the day before during an InvigoratEU Expert Hub. Based on a presentation of the InvigoratEU Foreign Interference Index, the participants discussed concrete EU measures to limit foreign interference. The members of the InvigoratEU consortium also met for two further workshops to begin the work on two toolkits for political decision-makers as well as educational and civil society actors. These are intended to bring together the consortium‘s specific policy recommendations.
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