European Union

Close your eyes for a second and think of something that happened over the last 20 years and you would have never expected to occur. Be it the pandemic, smart phones or something else, the truth is that the future likes to surprise us.
Our world is in a perpetual state of change. There are always multiple versions of the future—some are assumptions, others hopes and fears. To prepare, we have to consider not only the changes that appear most probable, but also the ones that we aren’t expecting.
Inspired by the ground-breaking 2001 Schooling for Tomorrow scenarios, this book provides a set of scenarios on the future of schooling, showing not a single path into the future, but many. Using these scenarios can help us identify the opportunities and challenges that these futures could hold for schooling and education more broadly. We can then use those ideas to help us better prepare and act now.
Whether parents or students, teachers or educational leaders, researchers or policy makers, this book has been written for all those who want to think about futures that haven’t occurred to play their part in shaping the future that will.

The current COVID-19 pandemic will change the world, like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 9/11 terror attacks. For the foreseeable future, EU governments will be preoccupied with dealing with the pandemic’ immediate socio-economic consequences. However, other policy areas will be affected as well. With regard to the EU’s security and defence policy, COVID-19 is likely to extinguish the unprecedented dynamism that has characterised its development since 2016. Its most immediate impact is likely to be decreased funding for several new initiatives such as the European Defence Fund. The pandemic is also likely to reduce the EU’s readiness to address crises in its neighbourhood and may hasten the Union’s relative decline as a global power if its recovery is slow and wrought by prolonged disputes between the member states over the appropriate economic response to the crisis. Yet, the EU should not completely abandon its pre-COVID-19 security and defence agenda. Both during and after the pandemic, the Union will continue to face familiar challenges such as cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns and instability in its neighbourhood.

The pandemic has created an unprecedented level of uncertainty, mainly because we do not know how long it will last. This affects the economic implications. Two facts are clear: there will be a recession and budget deficits will have to soar. This note draws some implications beyond the immediate health concerns. In many ways, they challenge the architecture of the Eurozone. Either the architecture will change or the Eurozone as we know it will cease to exist. During the sovereign debt crisis from 2010 to 2015, the architecture was changed just as the Eurozone was on the verge of losing one or more members, with unmeasurable consequences. Will history repeat itself?

China is the EU’s second biggest agri-food exports market. It is also the second destination for the export of EU products protected by geographical indications (GI), accounting for 9% of its value, including wines, agri-food and spirits. The EU-China Agreement on the Protection of Geographical Indications, concluded in November 2019, is expected to realise higher potential for exporting EU GIs to the country since market access is now guaranteed. But the US-China Economic and Trade Agreement, signed in January 2020, has set down a couple of precautionary measures, including a consultation mechanism with China before new GIs can be recognised for protection in the Chinese market because of international trade agreements. As a result, EU GIs could be brought under tighter US scrutiny before being recognised for protection in China. Analysis reveals, however, that only a handful of EU GIs may be affected by the latter Agreement, if at all.