An EU budget for the people and the planet

Europe’s future is shaped by forces it cannot fence off: climate disruption, economic instability, and conflict spillovers. These are shared challenges, creating shared security realities—whether Europe acknowledges it or not. That is why the EU’s external action budget in the next Multiannual Financial Framework matters. It is one of the clearest tests where Europe decides whether to respond through cooperation—or through deals that merely push problems elsewhere. 

Yet the Global Europe debate is increasingly framed on the wrong terms. Transactional politics is presented as realism; "partnership" becomes a label rather than a negotiated relationship; "mutual interest" is asserted even where power is profoundly unequal. Our future may be shared, but the terms of the debate—and the voices shaping it—are not. 

This is short-sighted. In a rapidly changing international order, it is also strategically self-defeating. Europe cannot sustain relationships with most of the world on one-sided terms and expect credibility, trust or influence. If it wants partnerships that endure under pressure, it must make political trade-offs visible—and redefine security, partnership and mutual interest around shared purpose, shared responsibility and shared power.  

Why transactional politics fails in a world of shared crises 

You cannot "deal" your way out of heat waves and climate disruption. You cannot "contain" financial instability, food insecurity, conflict spillovers or global health shocks in an interdependent world. The defining realities of our time do not respond to transactional logic. They depend on whether cooperation can hold on fair, predictable and trusted terms.  

Shared futures therefore demand shared solutions—both as a moral aspiration, and as strategic realism. Stability and security are increasingly built through coalitions, legitimacy and trust, not through one-off bargains that deepen mistrust. And shared solutions require shared power: partnerships that all sides can genuinely shape, own and defend. They shape whether communities can adapt to climate shocks, whether women and girls can exercise their rights, and whether people have meaningful opportunities where they live. 

The false choice that locks the debate 

The framing has become familiar: values or interests; solidarity or realism; naïveté or strategy. It sounds persuasive. It is false. 

The real debate concerns political trade-offs that remain largely invisible: whose interests count as "European"; who defines priorities; who bears the risks when cooperation fails; and what Europe is prepared to sacrifice in pursuit of long-term objectives. 

As long as those choices remain unnamed, the outcome is almost predetermined: more transactional politics, weaker accountability, and a version of partnership that sounds convincing in speeches while steadily eroding trust in practice. 

Shared futures, shared values—if Europe means what it says 

Europe does not lack the right language. Partnership, human rights, equality, multilateralism and the rules-based order remain at the heart of its political narrative. And that is precisely why expectations remain high. If consistently practised, Europe's own model and vision offer an alternative the world urgently needs predictable cooperation, negotiated partnerships, rules that protect the vulnerable, and public purpose that is not dictated by the strongest. 

Too often, however, the EU invokes these principles while organising cooperation in ways that undermine them—calling relationships "mutual" without genuinely negotiating their terms, celebrating rules while treating accountability as optional, speaking the language of partnership while practising transaction. This is not only a development failure. It is a strategic one. Credibility is not decoration. Credibility is power. 

Shared futures need shared voices—and shared solutions 

If shared futures require shared solutions, they also require shared voices. Yet the debate on Europe's role in the world remains confined to a narrow Brussels conversation, where partnership is too often discussed without the partners concerned. 

That is why we are launching this campaign. 

Over the coming months, we will bring together voices from across Europe and partner countries to challenge comfortable narratives, expose the trade-offs behind Europe's external action and test political rhetoric against reality. Our aim is simple: to widen the debate beyond Brussels and reclaim the language of equal partnership, security and mutual interests before the next Global Europe budget is decided. 

Together, we will ask difficult but necessary questions. What counts as security in an interdependent world? What does mutual interest mean when power is unequal? Who defines priorities? Who bears the risks? And what kind of Europe can build influence through credibility rather than transaction? 

Europe's role in the world: good neighbour or self-interest? 

Global Europe is not a technical budget chapter. It is one of the places where the EU decides how to relate to other regions in the world: either through co-creation, credibility, predictability and trust, or with incoherence and transactional bargains. A future Global Europe budget should invest in gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and rights, climate justice, public services, social protection and locally led development, while ensuring resources directly reach women's rights and feminist organizations. 

Reclaiming the Global Europe debate therefore begins by rejecting false choices and insisting on the real question: can the EU be a good neighbour, or do we want to go down the road of self-interest and contradictions? 

The choice is now. Either we retreat behind a worldview built on competition, containment and short-term transactions, seeing the world as a source of threats, markets and strategic assets. Or we embrace the reality that in an interdependent world, the safety and wellbeing of one relies on the safety and wellbeing of others.  

That choice runs through every major policy decision. Europe can pursue the green transition by extracting critical minerals from the Global South at the expense of local communities—or build it through genuine partnerships that create shared value. It can respond to migration primarily through externalised containment while ignoring the structural inequalities that drive displacement—or tackle the conditions that force people to leave in the first place. It can define security as a zero-sum pursuit of deterrence and control—or recognise that lasting security also depends on tackling poverty, strengthening public institutions, supporting human development and addressing the root causes of instability. 

Ultimately, the question is not whether Europe will shape the world. The real question is which world it chooses to help build one governed by zero-sum competition and transactional power, or one where shared challenges are met through shared responsibility, shared power and shared purpose.  

The choice is political. The consequences will be global. And the time to shape that choice is now. 

#MakeSolidarityGreatAgain