Visions of Europe in 2030

The age of globalization is over. The coming 30 years will be shaped by the logic of scarcity, resulting in a turn away from global trade and the creation of self-reliant geopolitical zones.

Wolfram Eilenberger argues on Spiegel Online that Europe is prepared for these challenges.

“The dogma-free, democratic marketplace of ideas, for which Socrates gave his life in Athens, is today a communicative reality in which hundreds of millions of citizens are actively taking part. The spirit of scientific methodology and veracity embodied by Bacon, Descartes, and Newton as a measure of the collective interpretation of the world is driving a community of researchers that is unique in its diversity. The federal confederacy based on fundamental human rights that Erasmus and Kant envisaged as the “kingdom of ends” is now our political order. The collective safeguarding of physical and intellectual basic rights that Aristotle recognized as the foundation of every polity, and the ethically concerned liberalism of Adam Smith are guiding the logic of our economic activity. And finally, the vision of a secular, active, multilingual life elevated by Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Goethe as the core of what it means to be human accurately describes our cultural existence today as nascent Europeans.”

The article has been provided by Internationale Politik–Global Edition as part of a special agreement with SPIEGEL ONLINE. IP–Global Edition is the English- language quarterly journal of the German Council of Foreign Relations, published in association with IP, Germany’s premier foreign policy monthly.

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