How does the EU deal with current challenges in a changing global order?Which courses of action are available?
Sandra Eckert addressed these questions in her keynote lecture at this year’s Bad Homburg Conference, “The European State: Europe’s Future in a World in Transition.” The conference took place on 17–18 September 2026 at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. The format combines perspectives from scholarly analysis and political practice. This year’s speakers from political practice included Frank Hoffmeister of the EU External Action Service and Member of the European Parliament Udo Bullmann; the keynote lecture was delivered by Jean Asselborn, former Foreign Minister of Luxembourg. In her talk, Eckert argued that the EU should be more prominently framed in political debate as an anchor of stability and that its existing economic-policy instruments should be deployed strategically in a geopolitically motivated global competition.
