The Challenges EU Leaders Must Face Up To

The coronavirus outbreak was only the latest stress test for the EU after Brexit, the refugee crisis and the Eurozone debt crisis. Although European leaders reacted quickly this time around, the EU is not out of the woods yet, as explains Catherine De Vries, professor of European Politics at Bocconi, in one of the new Future World masterclass series. There are many challenges ahead and the EU needs to find a united front.

Future World is a new series of video masterclasses, promoted by Bocconi together with Financial Times, with Bocconi professors and prominent guests discussing the megatrends and forces at work shaping the post-pandemic world and impacting the economy, climate change, digital transformation, population change and European politics.

In the video, Catherine De Vries highlights the difficulties leaders have in facing the EU's challenges - from post-pandemic economic recovery to climate change, from technological transition to geopolitical instability - in such a divided economic and political landscape. European leaders will have to coordinate their actions and reconcile radically different views about the appropriate scope and depth of integration. And at the same time secure public support for the European project to make its future sustainable. Her guest, Timothy Garton-Ash, commentator and author, adds insight on the best pathways for the EU to move forward and how to unite European citizens behind a common view of where the EU should be heading.