Europe is in flux. The union is racing toward European Parliament elections, and public debates are increasingly dominated by inward-leaning discussions over Europe’s future, not to mention Brexit.

The risk is that EU foreign policy will take a back seat, just when it is all the more necessary. From Ukraine to Algeria and from Armenia to the Western Balkans, new political players who want to initiate change are emerging across Europe’s Eastern and Southern neighborhoods. Any paralysis on EU foreign policy regarding the union’s borderlands would be strategically and geopolitically shortsighted.

In the framework of the Horizon 2020 EU-LISTCO project, the Carnegie Europe Foundation hosted a public discussion to take stock of the current political dynamics in Europe’s neighborhoods and consider what foreign policy challenges the EU faces over the next five years.

This event featured remarks by Heather Grabbe, director of the Open Society European Policy Institute; Pol Morillas, director of the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB); and Thomas Risse, professor of International Relations at the Freie Universität Berlin. Judy Dempsey, nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and editor-in-chief of the Strategic Europe blog, moderated.

Listen to the audio recording of the event below: