Publications

This publication tackles one of the most weaponized anti-gender narratives – transgender people in sports. It provides a framework that connects transgender participation to wider struggles for gender equality and human rights.

It is near consensual among Europeans that they need to strengthen the ‘European pillar in NATO’. This study traces the evolution of the concept of the European pillar, delineates potential meaning, and spells out what it would take to operationalize it.

Across the globe, environmental defenders are facing growing digital repression. This publication explores how grassroots movements are resisting surveillance, online violence and gendered disinformation by reclaiming technology.

The European Commission’s proposal for the 2028–2034 MFF opens a chance to raise ambition on climate, social, economic and security goals. This framing paper outlines key budget needs, priority areas and governance reforms.

The next MFF proposes centralised National and Regional Partnership Plans, shifting power to national governments and the European Commission. While promising coherence, this risks weaker regional involvement and oversight. 

The 2028–2034 MFF proposal acknowledges social pressures but risks diluting the EU’s social dimension. Social spending is consolidated without a dedicated European Social Fund line, while guarantees are weakened. 

The European Commission’s new MFF proposal introduces five new own resources to fund Next Generation EU debt and modernise EU revenues. This paper assesses the package and argues for a balanced basket of genuine new resources to support EU goals.

The MFF proposal sidelines climate and the environment. This paper assesses the spending target, the Do No Significant Harm principle, and climate and environmental provisions in the proposal’s two largest programmes.

Latin America and the Caribbean stand at a crossroads of escalating debt, intensifying climate shocks, and stalled progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. A new policy brief analyses the region's debt dynamics.

The global expansion of electromobility is intensifying competition for critical raw materials. A new analysis connects European supply chains to specific mining sites for the first time, identifying key environmental and social risks.

Across Africa, climate shocks and debt distress fuel each other in a vicious cycle. With external debt more than tripling since 2008, rising costs and plunging currencies are squeezing public finances - leaving little room for vital climate resilience investments. 

As Europe rethinks its security strategy in light of global shifts, a new initiative aims to ramp up defense efforts. This paper warns the plan lacks real coordination incentives and calls for deeper reforms that tie funding to shared priorities like democratic resilience and climate security.

This paper explores how the EU and its member states could adjust their climate policies based on expected Trump administration positions regarding two key elements of global climate action, and possible European responses along the variables of unity and decisiveness.

Cybercrime threatens not only digital security but also deepens social inequalities, affecting marginalized groups like women, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and human rights defenders. This policy briefing explores the risks of weaponized cyber laws and proposes a human rights-based approach.

The briefing shows how the scenarios of the IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report (AR6) perpetuate existing inequalities into the future. It explores alternative perspectives that prioritize equitable futures, climate justice, and well-being for all in IPCC AR7.

The European Union has many candidates for membership. It is currently conducting negotiations with Albania, North Macedonia, Ukraine, Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, the accession processes are complicated. The current policy paper on the reform debate analyses the arguments for and against a rapid enlargement of the EU and provides recommendations for policy-makers.

In order to advance the European energy transition and distribute the costs and benefits more fairly, the EU must find better steering instruments. This policy paper provides recommendations for the necessary acceleration of the European energy transition.

This policy paper makes some suggestions as to how reforms could be possible with and without treaty changes and how the EU can preserve its future viability.

The European Union faces the enormous challenge of having to achieve the necessary climate targets it has set itself, while at the same time increasing industrial competitiveness and ensuring public services of general interest. A sustainable European financial architecture based on three pillars is needed to finance these green-social investments at EU level. It is presented in this policy paper.

Approximately 800,000 people were killed in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The question of the  international community's responsibility is still being asked today. Many questions about German  foreign policy at the time also remain unanswered.

The Covid-19 pandemic crystalized the myriad challenges facing the modern world like few crises before it. Its impacts were so far reaching, its insights so diverse, that even the metaphors created to understand it spun off their own field of study.

Online gender-based violence, specifically targeted at women in politics, directly threatens democracy as it deteriorates and wears out until it becomes more unjust and less participatory.