Green European Journal

In the face of the intersecting crises of demography, technology and economic insecurity, finding solidarity in the care we give each other offers a path to a more optimistic future. But working towards this requires us to challenge the foundational assumptions of the economy that surrounds us, one that devalues rather than celebrates the care we give each other.

The language of crisis defines our collective experience of the 21st century. As our attention is pulled from one emergency to another, we risk overlooking the mindsets that enable these shocks – not only the pursuit of extraction, growth, and profit, but also our collective relationship with care.  

Care shows up in all our lives – in parenting, foster care and paid care work; in receiving care, or being part of communities. At some point, we all need to care for others and be cared for ourselves. Yet care has been systematically undervalued and under-resourced as a result of those dominant mindsets.  

This isn’t a new issue. Unpaid care labour – particularly the assumption that it is labour carried out by women – is a foundational premise of our modern economy. While more women than ever taking up paid labour is a positive outcome of changing social norms, little has been done to reckon with the implications this has for unpaid care. Particularly as people live longer and Europe’s population shifts, the need for change becomes ever more pressing.  

That care has traditionally been women’s work only compounds the perception that it lacks value and due attention.

But doing so is at odds with an economy that only rewards profit and productivity as, statistically speaking, so much of the care we give to each other counts as neither. Social security systems and wider public services that sustain care have seen weakened investment and wealth extraction through privatisation.  

In England and Wales, research shows that those with a closer relationship to care – whether they receive or give, caring services more than the average person – are more at risk of experiencing poverty: children (31 per cent versus 21 per cent for the rest of the population), larger families (44 per cent of children in large families) disabled people (28 per cent, compared to 20 per cent for able-bodied people) and unpaid carers (23 per cent).  

Where the language of crisis sets off panic, solutions are presented in the form of quick fixes like further investment in AI and technology. From managing workflow to increasing accessibility and translations, predicting future need and remotely monitoring vital signs, there are clear uses for technological innovations across social care settings. But additional research shows that both the public and workers are wary of the impact of less human connection in care and healthcare settings. Whilst inserting new technology for the sake of productivity may in fact achieve the opposite – open up more time for human-led care – there is also a risk that this motivation reinforces existing attempts to minimise investment in human care and ignores the role of unpaid care in our lives. 

Rather than seeing care as another crisis to tackle at surface level, it should be seen as the driver of a shift for our economic model. Facing up to this reality will require us to reckon with the importance of care in our lives and to acknowledge  different experiences of care as separate as having more in common than divides them.  

How did we get here? 

Although European countries invest in care to differing degrees, the Europe-wide approach  is rooted in a shared ideology that sees care as either a burden or a deficit. Feminist economics shows that this ideology is inseparable from the logics of neoliberalism. As writer and academic Emma Dowling articulates, “care… is a cost to capital”, and it follows that this cost must be minimised. When economic success is measured according to GDP growth, any such cost is at odds with ideas of economic progress. Feminist economist Emma Holten lays bare the extent to which measures of economic progress and care are in conflict with one another: “[In] the eyes of GDP, taking care of a flock of kids and taking a nap are equivalent. Either way you are unproductive.” 

Whilst some argue we should factor care into GDP calculations in order to appreciate its value, this would merely align care with capitalism rather than engage with the bigger question of whether capitalism will enhance or degrade the quality of care. With a growing number of economists identifying GDP’s dominance over the economy as detrimental to wellbeing, greater ambition over the scale of change needed is essential. 

That care has traditionally been women’s work only compounds the perception that it lacks value and due attention. This gendered divide endures: women, for example, take on at least two and a half times more housework and care work than men globally – despite this being a socially created and maintained inequality. 

Overcoming these gendered and capitalist mindsets will require action across multiple fronts. Our research with grassroots activists whose work spans different relationships with care identified a range of opportunities to act in solidarity towards a more caring economy: in our communities, in the ways we work, and through the welfare state. 

Communities: Care by design 

In our communities, resisting capitalist framings requires us to work together to create a culture that celebrates care and enables it by design. How we design the places we live is one element of this. Conventionally, care is compartmentalised into specific policy spaces; often this means it is squeezed into the remit of health and social care systems. But for many people, care intersects with their lives in a much more comprehensive way.  

In Barcelona, care blocks offer an alternative way of thinking about how the places in which  we live influence our care for one another. The city has applied to care the principles of the commons (the idea that resources are shared and co-governed by their user community), and emboldened them with material resources and participatory local democratic processes in a municipalist approach. 

These care blocks sprang from Barcelona en Comu (BComu), a political platform that centred feminist economic thinking, reframing care as a public responsibility as opposed to a private issue. They started from a place whereby care is foundational and where those who are the providers of care are centred in policy decisions. Bringing together the many policy threads that impact those who undertake care labour at a local level moved the approach to care – crucially, by foregrounding its place in the city’s economy. 

BComu approached care holistically rather than in a compartmentalised way. Despite bureaucratic barriers, they supported care workers to set up cooperatives and worked to create the abovementioned care blocks whose goal was to enable small teams of workers to support a defined number of people in a fixed geographic location. Workers use a self-managing team model; they also have full-time contracts (as opposed to the more common zero-hours contracts, thereby mitigating economic insecurity), and a space to meet and plan their work. The intention is to improve labour conditions (including travel time between clients), improve the experience of beneficiaries of care, and create a more integrated service with wider health and social services. 

In addition, BComu is creating Centres of Care in these neighbourhoods bringing together a range of services for care workers and those undertaking unpaid care in a range of forms. It expanded its municipal children’s services to enable more women from low income families to undertake paid work. 

Whilst many of Barcelona’s individual initiatives may be familiar to other countries, their political philosophy of bringing different groups together, placing resources in one place, and using a local approach sets BComu’s work apart. By centring inequality and the recognition that “care work is everyone’s responsibility”, they have taken steps to address the devaluing of care in all its forms. 

Work: Rebalancing time 

How we spend our time also significantly impacts our ability to take on different caring relationships. The norms governing paid labour contain fertile ground for change. Across Europe, paid work is failing people with a relationship to care, from disabled people to unpaid carers and parents. The EU’s disability employment gap sat at 24 per cent in 2024, whilst in the UK it’s at around 30 per cent. Meanwhile, some 600 unpaid carers leave paid work every day in the UK alone. Our recent research into unpaid carers’ experiences of poverty exemplifies this, with one unpaid carer telling us, “I was a teacher, but [care] was taking all my evenings… so I’ve got a new job but it’s paying a lot less.” 

Discussions around paid work tend to converge on a vague commitment to flexible working or access to unpaid or low-paid leave for specific groups. Yet such targeted reforms do little to engage with the systems that have led to the norms we have today. Here, solidarity across caring experiences has the potential to embolden campaigns to drive care’s recognition as a collective experience that are currently compartmentalised. Take paid leave. In the UK, different campaigners are working to increase paid sick leave, statutory paternity leave, and paid carers leave. Each of these is an act of rebalancing our paid labour with our wider lives, and any such campaign must speak to the underlying mindsets that devalue care for ourselves and each other.  

Moving from compartmentalised action to transformative change speaks to the increasing recognition in new economic thinking, rooted in feminist economics, that we must recognise the role unpaid care plays in our economy and the need to shift our paid labour model to value and enable care. A more systemic rebalancing of time is needed. 

This year will mark a century since the five-day work week was adopted by the Ford Motor Company, a significant win after a long campaign by unions. A decade prior to this, the average work week was between 50 and 60 hours. Since 1926, average working hours have plateaued, currently standing at 37.5 for women and 39 for men. 

There is growing interest and evidence for a move to a four-day work week, with pilots undertaken globally. Rebalancing the amount of time we spend in paid labour, without loss of pay, is a crucial way to centre care in our lives. In Poland, the government announced a pilot for a shorter working week in 2025 to address some of the longest working hours in Europe. Employers can voluntarily test a flexible approach to shorter working hours, either by reducing daily working hours, increasing the weekend by one day, or providing more annual leave, all whilst maintaining salaries. The pilot received four times the anticipated sign-ups from employers, with over 2000 companies currently undertaking a trial. 

In Germany, 45 organisations were recruited for a two-year pilot to trial a four-day work week, whilst in the UK, a further 61 trialled the same over six months. Across different contexts, results show that productivity improves (an obvious priority for employers), opening space for a better relationship with care. Improvements in wellbeing are also significant, with sick days declining and employees reporting a reduction in stress. 

Social security: Towards universalism 

The social security system is another essential pillar for a more flexible approach to paid work. For those whose caring role means that paid work is not possible, or is limited, the system should provide enough support to live well without having to minimise that care. 

In Europe, improvements in living conditions, shifting attitudes to illness and disability, and innovations in healthcare have meant more of us live longer. Countries have responded to this in different ways, with different degrees of investment in social security and social care. However, the vast majority of care is still provided by family and friends, much of it unpaid. 

In the 1970s, the UK introduced the Invalid Care Allowance (now Carer’s Allowance) for single people caring for a disabled family member. The allowance is now available to all people over 18 who are not in full-time education and are providing care for 35 hours or more a week. There are challenges with the UK model, not least its low payment level, but we can look to it as a starting point for considering how we value and enable those providing unpaid care.  

The idea that our social security systems are there to support our different relationships with care opens up the possibility of more universal provision too. Whilst payments for unpaid carers – and for disabled people who face extra costs – are essential to ensure everyone is able to live well, there is also a case to be made for a universal basic income (UBI) that overcomes the need for boundaries and thresholds around what counts as care. Any model would need to account for the additional costs faced by disabled people in an ableist society, but a foundation of UBI could go some way to enabling care in all our lives. 

Moving from compartmentalised action to transformative change speaks to the increasing recognition in new economic thinking, rooted in feminist economics…

A long road ahead 

Whilst UBI is a longer road, we are seeing early shifts across Europe towards a rebalancing of paid and unpaid labour, towards places designed around care that could enable us all to live well. As a care-experienced collaborator told us of a caring future, it “is imbued with the principles of love, care and freedom for all…we have an obligation to keep that alive and flourishing, to demand a multitude of futures that aren’t eschatological and annihilistic.” Embracing that care is a collective experience, and using that knowledge to act together, in solidarity, to change the mindsets that shape our economy is a source of hope. 

En la seva ambició de convertir el futbol en un esport veritablement global, la FIFA s’acosta cada vegada més als autòcrates i els avala obertament. Tanmateix, no són només els règims els que estan remodelant el futbol. El neoliberalisme també està transformant el joc i la relació entre els aficionats i els seus clubs. Hem parlat amb el politòleg i autodeclarat nostàlgic del futbol Cas Mudde.

Alessio Giussani: El 2025, poc abans que Trump comencés a bombardejar l’Iran, la FIFA li va concedir el seu premi de la pau. El president de la FIFA, Gianni Infantino, també va aparèixer a l’anomenada “junta de la pau” amb una gorra de Trump. Mentrestant, els aficionats normals són expulsats pels preus. Continua sent aquest el joc del poble?

Cas Mudde: El futbol mundial està cada vegada més capturat pels diners i per persones i règims dubtosos. La FIFA no és una excepció, sinó un cas extrem.

El Mundial de 2018 a Rússia va ser un torneig problemàtic, però no va generar gaire publicitat negativa. El 2022, a Qatar, era impossible ignorar la connexió entre futbol i  política. Tot i això, el règim qatarià va acabar obtenint una imatge pública força positiva: la gent es va oblidar de les vulneracions dels drets humans i de la quantitat desmesurada de diners gastada en estadis que pràcticament no tindrien utilitat després del torneig, i es va quedar amb la idea que havia estat un gran Mundial. Això és el que ha passat, pràcticament, amb tots els règims, democràtics o no, que han organitzat una Copa del Món. Aquest any, sospito, serà la primera vegada que els països amfitrions rebran més publicitat negativa que positiva.

Això no importa gaire a un país tan gran i poderós com els Estats Units, i encara menys a Trump, la base electoral del qual ni tan sols té interès pel futbol. Deixarà de preocupar-se pel torneig tan bon punt deixi de ser-li útil. Però això sí que perjudicarà la manera com la gent percep el futbol mundial.

Almenys sobre el paper, aquest no és el “Mundial MAGA”. L’organitzen tres nacions —els EUA, el Canadà i Mèxic— que representen tres espais diferents de la política mundial: els defensors dels combustibles fòssils, el liberalisme ultracentrista i el socialisme del Sud global. Quin significat li atribueixes a això?

Mark Carney també és defensor dels combustibles fòssils. El que és interessant és que aquest Mundial es coneixia inicialment com «la candidatura unificada», però en qüestió de mesos es va convertir, de fet, en el Mundial MAGA: tot gira al voltant dels Estats Units i de Trump. Això representava un repte, però també una gran oportunitat per al Canadà i Mèxic. El Canadà hauria pogut demostrar que és el bon noi de l’Amèrica del Nord; Mèxic hauria pogut demostrar que és el veritable país del futbol. El llistó és tan baix que fer el que tothom sol fer ja et fa quedar bé.

“La FIFA és, en molts sentits, un projecte increïblement colonial, que aposta per totes les coses dolentes que el colonialisme ha deixat enrere, incloses la corrupció i el lideratge personalista.

En canvi, Canadà i Mèxic no han dit res sobre el premi de la pau, del tracte a l’equip iranià i Omar Artan, i sobre l’àrbitre somali a qui es va denegar el visat. L’únic que fan és facilitar les coses a Trump i intentar suavitzar la situació quan fa alguna cosa dolenta, per això crec que també afrontaran crítiques. En general, no tinc la sensació que cap dels països amfitrions estigui particularment entusiasmat amb aquest Mundial. Claudia Sheinbaum ha impulsat algunes iniciatives realment bones a Mèxic, com ara construir centenars de camps comunitaris, però no hi veig un impuls real.

L’edició del Mundial de 2022 va ser una de les edicions més globals fins a la data, amb Qatar com a amfitrió i el Marroc arribant a les semifinals. L’edició d’enguany s’ha ampliat per incloure 48 equips en lloc de 32. Hi ha algun mèrit decolonial en l’ambició d’Infantino de fer que el futbol mundial sigui veritablement global?

El projecte d’Infantino és aconseguir la seva reelecció. Com més associacions nacionals de futbol estiguin representades al Mundial, més satisfetes estaran amb el seu lideratge. Si realment volgués decolonitzar el futbol, podria haver canviat la representació proporcional entre continents. En canvi, només va ampliar el nombre de participants sense canviar els criteris subjacents. Això vol dir tenir encara més països d’Europa, perquè són rics, i això és el que volen els patrocinadors.

La FIFA és, en molts sentits, un projecte increïblement colonial, que beneficia tots els elements negatius que el colonialisme ha deixat enrere, incloses la corrupció i el lideratge personalista. Essencialment, la FIFA dona diners a les associacions nacionals de futbol perquè els gastin com considerin millor per al progrés del futbol als seus països. Per descomptat, molts règims simplement agafen aquests diners i se’ls embutxaquen, deixant el futbol sense desenvolupar. Però a la FIFA això no li importa gaire.

La política de la FIFA també està empitjorant. El 2018, no es va pronunciar contra les polítiques russes contràries als drets LGBTQIA+, però tampoc els va donar suport. A Qatar, es va prohibir als capitans dels equips portar braçalets amb els colors de l’arc de Sant Martí. Ara, la FIFA defensa activament Trump i fins i tot el celebra.

Només una fracció de les nacions que participen al Mundial són democràcies —i encara menys liberals—, i el mateix s’aplica al conjunt dels membres de la FIFA. Hi ha maneres de defensar els valors liberals sense el postureig civilitzacional?

Si vols ser coherent, hauries de deixar la política al marge tant com puguis, perquè si converteixes la FIFA i el Mundial en un projecte liberal-democràtic, aleshores et dirigeixes a una minoria d’estats, i mai no seràs veritablement global. Es podria argumentar que ser polític, encara que de vegades siguis hipòcrita o incoherent, és millor que mantenir-se al marge de la política. Però ja no estic segur que sigui així, perquè les campanyes d’inclusió de la FIFA s’han tornat tan buides, tan vagues i tan plenes de pinkwashing que l’únic missatge que arriba és que tot el que diuen sobre política és una collonada. [Nota de la traductora: “pinkwashing” es manté en anglès perquè és un terme d’ús habitual per descriure l’ús instrumental de causes LGTBIQ+ per millorar la imatge d’una institució.]

Al mateix temps, és clar, la política sempre hi és. Organitzar un Mundial és una gran oportunitat per a qualsevol règim, i la neutralitat no fa que l’esdeveniment deixi de ser polític. Però sí que tinc un problema amb fixar expectatives elevades i no estar mai a l’altura —que és precisament el que ha fet la FIFA amb la seva agenda de drets humans i els seus grans compromisos amb la sostenibilitat. No pot existir un Mundial sostenible, i sempre hi haurà participants que no respectin els drets humans. Aleshores, per què la FIFA no introdueix una agenda menys ambiciosa però que realment compleixi?

Vivim un moment de ressorgiment del nativisme i del nacionalisme, amb l’extrema dreta en ascens arreu del món. Alimenta un Mundial farcit de política aquestes dinàmiques, o el futbol pot canalitzar el nacionalisme cap a alguna cosa més afable, fins i tot unificadora?

El sociòleg britànic Michael Billig va encunyar el terme “nacionalisme banal” per descriure les representacions quotidianes d’una nació, que construeixen un sentit compartit d’identitat nacional. Es tracta, per exemple, de banderes nacionals penjades a l’exterior dels edificis públics. El nacionalisme esportiu entra dins d’aquesta categoria, i té elements negatius. Al meu país, els Països Baixos, una part del nostre sentiment antigermànic no provenia de la Segona Guerra Mundial, sinó del futbol. Al mateix temps, els equips de futbol en molts països són més multiculturals que les societats, i jugadors de diferents ètnies esdevenen herois i models per a molts —almenys mentre guanyen.

El que és peculiar del futbol és l’emoció i la intensitat que afegeix al nacionalisme banal, fent que el nacionalisme sigui una mica secundari. Guanyar vol dir guanyar un partit, no que la teva nació domini una altra. Per molt que em desagradin les banderes, crec que hi ha un pànic moral al voltant del nacionalisme i el hooliganisme en el futbol. Hi ha elements inclusius i exclusius: pot ser tant bo com dolent.

Imparteixes un curs sobre futbol i política. Com interpretes aquesta relació, i com veus que evoluciona?

Gran part de l’atenció se centra en l’alta política: institucions, governs, partits, etcètera. A mi m’interessa més la ‘baixa’ política de l’esport, la música, la cultura, etc. Faig servir el futbol per ensenyar política, perquè el futbol reflecteix la societat de moltes maneres. Curiosament, aquest és un dels cursos més radicals que he impartit. Llegim Judith Butler i la performativitat de gènere, i parlem molt d’identitat i globalització.

Pensa en la rellevància creixent dels “equips de la diàspora”, aquelles seleccions nacionals que  estan més  formades cada vegada més per jugadors nacionals “de sang” encara que no hagin nascut ni crescut al país que representen. Senegal n’és un exemple paradigmàtic, amb gairebé la meitat dels jugadors nascuts o criats fora del país —principalment a França, la seva antiga potència colonial. Els equips de la diàspora són, en certa manera, el contrari dels “equips cívics”, formats per jugadors de minories nascuts i criats en un país, com els alemanys d’origen turc. Això mostra que fins i tot els estats molt restrictius amb la immigració poden ser molt flexibles quan es tracta d’esportistes d’elit, i que les persones antiimmigració no tenen cap problema amb això.

La UE també ha tingut un paper important en la configuració del futbol modern. La sentència Bosman del Tribunal de Justícia de la Unió Europea, el 1995 va sacsejar el sistema europeu de traspassos futbolístics per alinear-lo amb les normes del mercat únic. I com que Europa és tan dominant en el futbol global, la sentència va canviar el sistema mundial.

Interpretes el futbol com a part de la societat civil. Quin és el raonament darrere d’aquesta associació?

Solia treballar sobre la societat civil a l’Europa postcomunista a finals dels anys noranta i principis dels 2000, hi havia una associació positiva entre una societat civil forta i una democràcia saludable. Però el discurs tenia un enfocament molt limitat en grups prooccidentals, grups feministes, etcètera. M’interessaven els anomenats grups de la societat “incivilitzada”, que no eren necessàriament prodemocràtics, però que unien molt a les persones i eren políticament actius. Els hooligans i els ultres sovint tenen dues cares: tenen mala reputació, particularment a Europa, però també són actius en bones causes, com ajudar persones pobres o comunitats locals després de terratrèmols o altres desastres naturals. M’agrada aquesta complexitat.

Com ha canviat el neoliberalisme el futbol?

Per donar resposta a aquesta pregunta sovint faig servir el club al que dono suport, el PSV Eindhoven. El PSV va ser fundat per treballadors de Philips. Era, en molts sentits, una representació de l’economia industrial, d’una forma de capitalisme arrelat. Philips tenia una connexió amb Eindhoven perquè tenia fàbriques a la ciutat, i senzillament no pots  agafar fàbriques i traslladar-les a un altre lloc. Ara tens clubs, com el Manchester City, que són un reflex perfecte del neoliberalisme global. Un règim estranger decideix invertir en un club no perquè tingui una connexió amb una comunitat local, sinó perquè aquest club és una marca global i et dona accés a una audiència global. La connexió entre capitalisme i futbol sempre hi ha estat, però el capitalisme ha canviat, i el futbol està canviant amb ell.

La majoria dels aficionats al futbol no volen seure en un estadi asèptic i vigilat. Volen seure en un lloc que encara tingui atmosfera i autenticitat sense el racisme i el sexisme. I això és possible.

Sent nostàlgic, he de recordar que els vells temps no sempre van ser tan purs. Abans dels fons d’inversió, hi havia l’oligarca rus Roman Abramóvitx que va comprar el Chelsea. En contextos més petits, hi havia el venedor de cotxes de segona mà que dirigia el club local. L’escala era més petita i més local, però aquell tipus també era dubtós i feia servir el futbol per elevar la seva pròpia imatge.

El que em preocupa des del punt de vista de la societat civil és que, tot i que sempre hi va haver explotació i jerarquia, també hi havia una connexió amb la comunitat. Philips depenia d’Eindhoven. Els capitalistes d’avui no tenen aquesta connexió, i la comunitat local gairebé ja no té veu. Els grans clubs ja no depenen de la venda d’entrades com a part important dels seus ingressos. Ara els diners provenen dels drets de retransmissió i dels patrocinadors.

Els aficionats són a temps de salvar el joc en el qual s’ha convertit?

Els aficionats són una mica com els addictes: tenen el poder de destruir el sistema demà mateix si deixen d’alimentar la maquinària. Ningú no invertirà diners en el futbol si ningú no el mira. Però, si ho fan, també hi surten perdent. Per això tenen poques opcions per plantar cara. Poden resistir la mercantilització des de dins del sistema. A Alemanya, per exemple, van aconseguir frenar la implantació dels partits dels dilluns al vespre. O bé poden abandonar el sistema del tot i crear clubs alternatius propietat dels aficionats, però aquests clubs no poden competir al màxim nivell.

No soc particularment optimista perquè veig que el futbol modern es destrueix a si mateix de la mateixa manera que ho fa el capitalisme. S’expandeix a nivells insostenibles, com un esquema piramidal en què el valor es va aprimant cada cop més. Les firmes de capital privat i els règims estan injectant diners al sistema perquè esperen alguna cosa a canvi, ja sigui benefici o victòries diplomàtiques. Però poden retirar-se tan ràpidament com hi van entrar si s’adonen que ja no els queda res a guanyar. I quan la bombolla esclata, no tornem al punt on érem abans, perquè les lleialtats han desaparegut. La generació d’anglesos que ha quedat exclosa dels estadis de la Premier League pels preus no tornarà així com així.

Molts clubs de futbol es troben entre les institucions més antigues que existeixen. Han existit durant més d’un segle, i han donat sentit al fet de ser d’algun lloc. Quan una antiga ciutat minera perd un equip de futbol, és una pèrdua important per a la comunitat.

Malgrat tot, el futbol encara és capaç de crear comunitat i connexió. Hi ha res que els partits polítics o les organitzacions de la societat civil en puguin aprendre?

El tipus de relació que tens amb un club que segueixes és profundament irracional. No pots recrear aquesta relació artificialment.

Una cosa que se’n pot aprendre és la importància de l’arrelament. Si la gent continua donant suport a un club fins i tot quan perd o baixa de categoria, és perquè s’hi sent connectada. Molts clubs locals funcionen gràcies a voluntaris i persones que no en treuen diners. La professionalització creixent i la manca d’arrelament són cada vegada més febleses comuns dels moviments progressistes, i veig que una cosa semblant passarà en el futbol modern.

Si no et reconeixen com a part de la comunitat, la gent sent que has perdut el contacte. La majoria d’ONG avui dia no tenen voluntaris; tenen professionals. I per als professionals, la institució importa més que la causa. Si el que t’importa principalment és una causa, trobes maneres de fer la feina fins i tot quan s’acaben els diners. Però si el que t’importa principalment és la institució, passaràs a una altra cosa i trobaràs una altra feina. Les grans ONG s’han convertit en negocis amb llocs de treball molt ben pagats ocupats per persones que passen d’una organització a una altra. El mateix està passant al futbol.

Pel costat positiu, el futbol no s’ha tornat també més inclusiu?

Absolutament. Als anys vuitanta i noranta, les dones o les persones queer no se sentirien segures en un estadi de la Premier League, i ara sí. En certa manera, la gentrificació ha fet el futbol més accessible per a alguns grups. És clar que ha exclòs una part de la classe treballadora blanca, però una part de la classe treballadora blanca abans excloïa altres grups. Hi he pensat molt, perquè com qualsevol nostàlgic, hi havia una part que no veia. Com a home blanc heterosexual, formo part del grup que abans posseïa l’estadi, i per això mai no vaig experimentar l’exclusió.

Però la securitització i l’expulsió de la gent pels preus no són les úniques opcions per combatre la discriminació, i els aficionats més rics no són necessàriament menys racistes. Molt del sexisme, l’homofòbia i el racisme que veus als estadis és performatiu. Per tant, el camí a seguir és redefinir el paper de l’aficionat. Alemanya mostra que es poden tenir estadis assequibles que també siguin més inclusius. Funciona millor quan són els mateixos aficionats els qui es controlen i es moderen mútuament. El Borussia Dortmund, per exemple, tenia un problema important amb neonazis als anys vuitanta i, en gran mesura, va aconseguir expulsar-los.

La majoria dels aficionats al futbol no volen seure en un estadi asèptic i vigilat. Volen seure en un lloc que encara tingui atmosfera i autenticitat sense el racisme i el sexisme. I això és possible.

La popularitat del futbol femení està explotant. Pot ser una alternativa més saludable a les dinàmiques que has estat descrivint?

Sovint recorrem a les dones per resoldre els problemes que han creat els homes. Diem que els homes són així, de manera que necessitem més dones, perquè les dones són diferents. Però les dones no són necessàriament millors que els homes. Si l’estructura t’empeny en una determinada direcció, no importa qui siguis. En l’estructura actual, que el futbol femení continuï sent “pur” també voldria dir que les dones continuïn cobrant molt menys que els homes en nom d’algun ideal, i no crec que això sigui just.

En qualsevol cas, sembla que el futbol femení s’està transformant ràpidament al futbol modern i avança en la mateixa direcció que el futbol masculí —potencialment fins i tot més de pressa. La propietat de varis clubs ja és una realitat. Als EUA, un club de Columbus, Ohio, ha pagat recentment 200 milions de dòlars a la National Women’s Soccer League per incorporar-se a la lliga el 2028. Això són molts més diners del que s’està gastant en les jugadores.

Tot i així, molts clubs de futbol femení són més actius políticament que els clubs masculins, perquè les jugadores són més explícites. Ser futbolista dona encara es veu com una transgressió, de manera que tendeixes a estar més compromesa políticament. Però quant menys transgressor i més mercantilitzat es torni el futbol femení, menys polític serà. De moment, continua sent una via d’escapament per a molts aficionats perquè és més assequible i més divertit —sens dubte per als grups minoritaris, i particularment per a les persones queer.

On se situa el futbol femení pel que fa a la seva dimensió comunitària i de societat civil?

Gairebé tots els clubs femenins han estat fundats per clubs masculins, de manera que molt pocs són realment l’expressió d’una comunitat. Hi ha excepcions, com el Turbine Potsdam a Alemanya, que és un dels equips femenins amb més èxit del país. Però ara han estat  superats per clubs com el Bayern de Munic i el Wolfsburg, perquè no pots competir amb els gegants.

Tanmateix, la majoria dels aficionats al futbol femení tenen un propòsit polític, i en aquest sentit són l’expressió d’una comunitat. Molts aficionats subratllen que hi són per donar suport a l’esport femení, no a un club concret. Ningú no va a un partit de futbol masculí per donar suport al moviment. Per tant, hi ha un element de comunitat.

Translated by Sandra Cruz

Nearly two years after the Constitutional Court’s decision to annul Romania’s 2024 presidential election, there is no clear end in sight to one of the most divisive political sagas in the country’s recent history. With anti-establishment sentiment on the rise, evidence of Russian interference might not settle the matter and rebuild trust with citizens.

Since his election as president in Romania’s May 2025 re-run, Nicușor Dan has yet to fulfil a key campaign promise: releasing a detailed report explaining why the Constitutional Court cancelled the 2024 presidential race after far-right candidate Călin Georgescu won the first round with nearly 23 per cent of the vote.

The Court justified its unprecedented intervention on the basis of intelligence assessments alleging a coordinated foreign interference operation. According to those evaluations, the campaign involved illicit financing, online manipulation, and Russian-linked networks that artificially boosted Georgescu’s visibility on platforms such as TikTok.

Dan repeatedly promised greater transparency on the matter. He initially suggested the report wouldlikely be released by the end of January 2026. Officials within the presidential administration later shifted the expected release date to the end of April. However, no report was published. Then, the president said that it would come out later this year, without providing a clear timeline.

In the absence of the promised report, Dan has nevertheless made increasingly categorical public claims. He has stated that, “without a doubt”, Georgescu had benefited from “an infrastructure created by Russia”. Dan has also argued that Romania has been the target of Russian hybrid warfare for at least a decade, and suggested that around 90 per cent of the information gathered by state authorities could eventually be disclosed publicly.

Dan may be right. The interference may have been real, serious, and well-documented. Still, there remains a consequential question that no authority has publicly addressed: Was annulling the election a proportionate response? Did the alleged Russian campaign decisively distort the result, or did nearly a quarter of Romanian voters choose Georgescu for reasons of their own?

The legitimacy of the annulment ultimately depends not only on what happened, but on whether what happened justified one of the most extraordinary interventions possible in a democratic process. And even proving proportionality may not be enough in a country where trust in institutions has been eroding long before 2024, and where, for many, the verdict on that question has already been reached.

Uncharted territory

In March 2025 and in the wake of Romania’s decision to annul the elections,  the Venice Commission, the Council of Europe’s advisory body on constitutional matters, released a report examining when constitutional courts may invalidate elections. The Commission emphasised that annulment should be a measure of last resort, reserved for exceptional circumstances and supported by clear evidence. Under international democratic standards, the Commission stressed, results should only be annulled when irregularities can be shown to have directly affected the vote’s outcome.

That is a high bar, and the Commission noted it is especially difficult to meet when the alleged irregularities concern online campaigning rather than voting or ballot counting. It added that online political speech is generally protected by freedom of expression standards, making it “currently hard to see how the form and content of campaign messaging of candidates could amount to a violation of electoral law that may lead to the annulment of the elections”.

How feasible, then, is it to demonstrate that the irregularities in campaigning invoked by Romania’s Constitutional Court determined the voting results? Luciana Alexandra Ghica, a political science professor at the University of Bucharest, argues that the challenge is notable. Establishing such a causal link requires long-term technical data, sustained multidisciplinary cooperation, and, above all, political will.

“This might be the most difficult part,” she explained, adding that success depends on “the mechanisms needed to support such an effort.” In her assessment, Romania currently lacks much of that institutional capacity, with “too little coordination, too little recognition of experts, and too many appointments based on personal connections”.

What the evidence shows

In its decision to annul the election, Romania’s Constitutional Court concluded that the electoral process had been “compromised throughout its entire course” by irregularities that “distorted the free and fair nature of the vote,” linking it to a coordinated foreign interference operation.  Yet the ruling did not explain why annulment was a proportionate response, nor did it attempt to demonstrate how the alleged irregularities concretely affected the outcome.

Subsequent investigations have strengthened the case that Romania was indeed targeted by a sophisticated influence campaign. In September 2025, the General Prosecutor’s office published a report that Dan presented to European leaders the following month. The report exposes a coordinated Russian-linked operation of considerable scale. It states that companies including AdNow, MGID, Geozo, and AdsKeeper built alarge online influence network using fake social media pages, AI-generated content, and native advertising, as well as cloned doppelgänger websites designed to mimic trusted news outlets and public institutions.

Neither the prosecutor’s report nor the Constitutional Court’s original ruling demonstrates how the interference altered voting patterns, or whether less intrusive measures could have been taken to address the situation.

More than 2,000 Facebook pages and coordinated Telegram, TikTok, YouTube, and clickbait ecosystems were allegedly activated to identify and grow receptive audiences by manipulating vulnerable individuals, spreading anti-government information, and eroding trust in institutions ahead of Romania’s 2024 elections.

Then, closer to polling day, the same pre-built ecosystem was reportedly “activated” or repurposed more explicitly for electoral influence, with content shifting toward coordinated messaging that supported Georgescu and amplified political disinformation during the campaign period.

These findings are substantial, but they do not resolve the question of proportionality. Neither the prosecutor’s report nor the Constitutional Court’s original ruling demonstrates how the interference altered voting patterns, whether Georgescu’s performance depended decisively on the operation, or whether less intrusive measures could have been taken to address the situation.

Lingering questions

Two considerations make the proportionality case harder to establish. One is the question of why voters supported Georgescu in the first place. While official explanations for the annulment have focused on foreign interference, analysts argue domestic political and social grievances also played a significant role in boosting his appeal. “External interference overlapped with internal anxiety, with Russia’s hybrid campaign exploiting a level of weakness within our own democracy,” stressed Ioan Stanomir, a political science professor at the University of Bucharest.

A key component of this anxiety was socio-economic dislocation. According to Stefan Hofmann, the head of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) in Romania, large segments of the electorate felt “isolated and shut out from opportunity”, particularly amid widening inequality. Georgescu was able to harness those frustrations by offering voters something more visceral than policy: a sense of belonging, identity, and recognition. “A discourse like Georgescu’s addresses the disorientation and fear people felt,” Hofmann said.

The second consideration is that this pattern was not unique to Georgescu.  Elena Lasconi, the runner-up of the first round of the 2024 election, also sat outside the mainstream political establishment and made the corruption and failures of the political class a key theme of her campaign.

That both frontrunners emerged as vehicles for anti-establishment sentiment points to a broader public dissatisfaction that predated the election and cannot easily be attributed to foreign influence alone. “When voters want to channel their frustration, to put it mildly, they turn to options outside the political mainstream,” Hofmann said.

The stronger the role played by genuine domestic grievances, the harder it becomes to demonstrate that foreign interference was a decisive causal factor in producing Georgescu’s success. Hofmann notes that Romanian authorities could have considered a more targeted measure, like disqualifying Georgescu, while allowing the second round to proceed. Such an approach would have addressed concerns surrounding him without invalidating the votes already cast by millions of Romanians.

Whether that or other alternatives would have been legally viable or politically preferable, remains open to debate.

The counter-narrative

In the absence of a fully consolidated public justification, the annulment has not settled into a single authoritative interpretation. Instead, it has become a contested political reference point, increasingly shaped outside formal institutional channels. Many Romanians doubted from the outset that the circumstances justified the Constitutional Court’s decision. An IRES poll conducted shortly after the annulment found that 62 per cent of respondents considered it a bad one.

Public trust in institutions has continued to decline since then. An INSCOP poll comparing July 2025 with January 2026 showed trust in the presidency falling from nearly 35 per cent to around 28 per cent, while trust in Parliament dropped from 14.5 per cent to just under 12 per cent.

At the same time, support for far-right parties and figures has grown. A January 2026 CURS poll found Georgescu to be the most trusted political figure in the country with an approval rating of 36 per cent. Following him were George Simion – another far-right figure who lost to Nicușor Dan in 2025 – at 32 per cent, and Dan at 31 per cent. Meanwhile, an INSCOP survey on parliamentary voting intention placed the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) – the party founded and chaired by Simion – at around 38 per cent, significantly ahead of any competitor.

For AUR and Georgescu, the annulment has become a central mobilising narrative, framed as evidence of systemic illegitimacy: the 2024 election was “stolen”, Georgescu is the rightful president, and all Romanian elections are vulnerable to manipulation. In response to Dan’s report presented to European leaders, AUR published its own assessment, describing the annulment as a “state coup” carried out through “unconstitutional means”.

In AUR’s framing, Russia’s intervention in the election was used as the pretext to justify the coup. The report concludes that Romania is “not a democracy”, and that “the coup has exposed the general vulnerability of state institutions and of the oligarchic system governing the country”. In November 2025, when speaking about municipal elections in Bucharest, Georgescu argued that “all these elections are a farce”.

In 2026, he once again claimed that the annulment was an act of “desperation” because the Romanian people were about to “take back their country”. He added that the Constitutional Court’s decision was conducted with “external colleagues, namely the European Union,” thus inverting the foreign interference narrative to implicate Brussels rather than Moscow.

According to Ghica, the narratives being pushed by Georgescu and his allies are unlikely to fade quickly. Voters who feel they were deprived of a rightful president do not simply absorb that grievance and move on: they carry it forward. What makes this particularly hard to reverse, Ghica argues, is that the audiences most exposed to these narratives are also the least equipped to scrutinise them: people with “limited digital and functional literacy, heavily reliant on social media, and affected by considerable social and economic inequalities.”

Voters who feel they were deprived of a rightful president do not simply absorb that grievance and move on: they carry it forward.

Dan’s quicksand

While the “stolen election” narrative has provided AUR and Georgescu with a powerful mobilising tool, it does not fully explain their sustained popularity. Anti-establishment sentiment has been further reinforced by a broader climate of political instability that Dan’s first year in office has done little to change.

Dan, a former mayor of Bucharest, came to office as an outsider candidate, promising reform and a break with established political practices. That positioning made him vulnerable to any perception of indecision or continuity with the system he had promised to change. His first year as president has supplied critics with considerable material.

The most significant test came in early May 2026, when a no-confidence motion brought down the government of prime minister Ilie Bolojan. The procedure was initiated by the Social Democrats and AUR over painful austerity measures and tax increases introduced to address Romania’s fiscal deficit, the largest in the EU at9.3 per cent of GDP in 2024 and 7.9 per cent in 2025.

For the Social Democrats, this was also a political escape from the costs of staying in power as unpopular fiscal measures hit their voters and patronage networks, while AUR used the moment to amplify its anti-austerity, anti-establishment message.

Dan declined to publicly back Bolojan, arguing that his role was that of a mediator. Critics, however, say Dan’s position implicitly validated the legitimacy of the Social Democrats’ move. They are also openly questioning whether the president’s passivity in this and other matters can bring stability, or whether it surrenders control over key political outcomes to other forces, such as the Social Democrats.

Amid heightened political turmoil, the no-confidence motion passed.  Dan subsequently sought to reassure the public, insisting that Romania remained stable. But as weeks passed without the confirmation of a new government, his assurances rang increasingly hollow.

“President Dan is in a delicate situation,” stressed Professor Stanomir. “One year after his election, he is compelled to rebuild a parliamentary majority. Such a challenge is likely to affect the years of his mandate that lie ahead.”

The rule, not the exception

Romania has not been the only target of Russian electoral interference in the EU. Ahead of Poland’s 2025 presidential election, minister of digital affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski publicly warned of an “unprecedented” Russian attempt to influence the vote via cyberattacks, sabotage, and disinformation. Yet the elections proceeded.

In Croatia’s 2025 presidential election, researchers found that Russian-linked bots and disinformation campaigns favoured the anti-NATO candidate, Zoran Milanović,

spreading pro-Kremlin narratives on social media platforms to sway public opinion.

The EU has begun responding. In December 2024, the Commission launched a formal investigation into TikTok under the Digital Services Act, following the release of Romanian intelligence reports suggesting the platform had been used to facilitate foreign interference.

In an email exchange, a Commission spokesperson confirmed to me that the proceedings remain ongoing. The outcome of this initiative could have lasting implications for the role of major tech platforms in electoral processes and, more broadly, for the influence of privately owned tech companies on democratic institutions. Nevertheless, the Commission has been careful to define the limits of its role. “The organisation and conduct of elections is a national competence,” the spokesperson said. “Elections have always been and will always remain in the hands of the citizens.”

That delineation matters. The EU can pressure platforms to “protect the integrity of elections through the Digital Services Act” and sanction individuals linked to disinformation campaigns. It can also support member states through bodies like the newly established European Centre for Democratic Resilience, which aims to help EU countries build their capacity to detect threats to democratic processes and strengthen resilience.

What the EU cannot do is answer the questions that Romania’s annulment continues to raise. Those questions remain Romania’s to resolve.

Can the loose ends be tied?

This is why the long-promised presidential report matters. Its most important task is not simply to establish what happened, but to explain why the response that followed was necessary and why less intrusive alternatives would have been insufficient to protect the integrity of the democratic process.

But even a report that does so convincingly may not be enough to reverse the continued decline in trust in institutions or the rising support for anti-establishment forces in Romania.

A detailed account might settle some of the concrete disputes that have festered since the annulment, like Georgescu’s claim that he is the rightful president. Rebuilding trust, however, will require more than evidence alone. “To get back some level of trust, people’s feelings have to be acknowledged and understood,” KAS’ Hofmann said, both in relation to the 2024 election and the broader dissatisfaction that preceded it. Romania’s traditional parties, he suggests, need to confront their own record more openly, even when doing so means acknowledging uncomfortable truths.

Ghica sees the structural obstacles as even more daunting. Trust in democratic processes and electoral integrity could be re-established, she argues, only through sustained, coordinated effort. “Time is not on our side in this hybrid war. The levels of social polarisation, digital and functional illiteracy, as well as economic inequality, which generates frustration toward others and toward authorities, remain very high.”

As the techno-authoritarian race to develop advanced Artificial Intelligence technologies continues at full steam, Silicon Valley’s sway over regulatory agendas has come to rival – even surpass – that of many states. Yet, between the ambitions of global superpowers and AI giants, Europe has the opportunity to seek something better. An interview with award-winning journalist and author Karen Hao.

Alessio Giussani: Several metaphors have been evoked to describe the current model of AI development – a parrot or a mirror, for example. Why did you choose that of empire?

Karen Hao: I think those metaphors are all extremely useful. I focus on empire because I’m not just looking at the technical artefact itself and what happens when it’s deployed in society, but also at the production of this technology and the actors who consolidate an extraordinary amount of economic and political power to produce it.

There are four main reasons why I call this system an empire. First, these companies lay claim to resources that are not theirs: individuals’ data, as well as the work of writers and creators. Second, they exploit an extraordinary amount of labour, and that goes for the workers they exploit within the production process and the supply chain of these technologies, as well as the workers whose labour rights are eroded when the technology is deployed.

The third aspect is information control. A major facet of empires’ expansion is the ability to filter all knowledge production and information through the lens of their imperial agenda, and this is precisely what AI companies are doing. They control and censor the science that gets produced by bankrolling most AI researchers, and they are building an information technology that they seek to make the central portal through which everyone else engages with the world, including in education.

Lastly, they wrap all this in a civilising mission. They say that they’re engaging in this work because ultimately they are trying to bring humanity a technology that will elevate us to a utopian state, and if the bad guys – which usually means China – develop it before us, then we will instead descend into a dystopian state. This is a kind of religious narrative that was also common among empires of old.

The AI empire, as you are describing it, is not limited to a company; it’s a system, a logic. What lies behind your focus on OpenAI and on the figure of its CEO, Sam Altman?

One answer is that people need stories to help make concrete what would otherwise be an abstract idea. But OpenAI is also particularly interesting because it made all of the major decisions that changed the norms within the industry, pushing it towards empire-building. It was OpenAI that decided to scale at all costs, to work with large language models, and produce a chatbot-like interface for them. Pretty much everything that the public understands to be associated with AI today was first decided within OpenAI’s walls.

By telling that history, it becomes much more obvious that AI is not inevitable, because you start to realise there were real people making those decisions based on their values, their worldviews, their personal vendettas – whatever it is that actually shaped the trajectory of AI development. Sam Altman’s ideologies are imbued in the model, not just in an abstract sense. You often hear the truism that models reflect their creators, but I wanted to show how this actually happens. It’s about the companies, the people, and the economic and ideological environment they are part of.

As these technologies grow more powerful, asserting control over their deployment is becoming an existential question. We saw Big Tech bowing to Trump at his second inauguration, but we are also seeing AI CEOs increasingly at odds with the government. Who will end up having the final say – the state or private companies?

There is an ongoing battle for who’s going to call the shots. I see the relationship between Washington and Silicon Valley as an alliance of convenience, but a very fraught one. They represent two different models of empire, each with its own imperial agenda. Both are trying to expand and quite literally take over more land from other countries, but the Trump administration sees AI companies as tools in the hands of the state’s imperial ambitions. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley sees the Trump administration as a tool of their imperial ambitions, but they’re not actually on the same page, because each of them wants to be the supreme entity that comes out on top.

There have been moments when the US government has demonstrated that it’s still on top – when Trump and Musk collided, Musk got booted out. However, when the Department of War clashed with Anthropic, the company showed that it was the stronger power in that instance: Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth evoked the nuclear option, threatening to declare the company a supply chain risk as the ultimate stick that he could whack to get Anthropic in line, and the company still didn’t get in line. Quite embarrassingly, the Department of War has become deeply dependent on a private actor that is unwilling to cooperate on the government’s terms, and the government can do nothing about it.

There needs to be accountability for both of these imperial actors, and that accountability will not come from either of them; it has to come from the people. From bottom-up, grassroots organising, which we are beginning to see blossoming all around the world, including in the US. As impervious as the alliance of convenience may appear, it is actually extremely fragile, and there are opportunities to accelerate its demise by applying more pressure at its pain points.

Instead of looking at AI as a global race between the good and the bad guys, we should be thinking about what vision we have for society.

The state of AI development looks like a competitive race to the bottom between rival companies and global superpowers. What role has geopolitical competition with China played in bringing AI to its current predicament?

China is a card that Silicon Valley has played for a decade, pretty much ever since it got kicked out of China. But when you look at the track record of this argument, you see that what has happened is consistently the opposite of what Silicon Valley said would happen.

They said that by not regulating Silicon Valley companies – and by regulating China through export controls – American technology would dominate worldwide. Yet TikTok is now the most popular social media platform, and Chinese open-source AI models are becoming more and more popular around the world, including in the US. They also promised that Silicon Valley dominance would have a liberalising effect on the world, but that hasn’t come to pass either; their effect has been deeply illiberalising. There has been an extraordinary erosion of democratic institutions and a rapid acceleration of democratic backsliding, aided by Silicon Valley platforms and AI technologies.

Instead of looking at AI as a global race between the good and the bad guys, we should be thinking about what vision we have for society, what kind of AI technologies would support that vision, and what resources we need to bring it about. We should be competing not in a race Silicon Valley defined, but on the ideas and values we want to uphold. And I believe Europe has an opportunity here to show the world a third way, different from those of the US and China, that resets the rules of the game.

The European Commission has recently adopted a tech sovereignty package as part of Europe’s effort to chart its own technological path. How should we articulate this vision to avoid ending up with a European version of a surveillance-based, oligarchic business model?

The North Star that Europe should be following is not sovereignty for sovereignty’s sake, but the purpose of achieving that sovereignty. Europe, or at least most of it, is one of the last bastions of democracy in the world. It upholds human rights and freedoms, and it needs tech sovereignty to help advance these values. As long as it remains extremely dependent on systems being developed in a very authoritarian way and seeking to undermine European societies, it cannot uphold its values. Sovereignty as a concept tends to become vague if you just start thinking about it as a goal in and of itself. It should be a means towards a purpose.

What kind of coalitions, constituencies, or sites of conflict should we be starting from in order to build that alternative vision?

First of all, we should understand AI governance in an expansive way. Strengthening labour rights and protecting civil society, for example, counts as AI governance. Students, teachers, and health care workers should also be at the table to help shape and contest how AI is developed and deployed in society. Education is key, both as a sector and a coalition that we need to bring in, and in terms of public education around AI.

Another important aspect is funding AI researchers and entrepreneurs to figure out the more technical aspects of what you are trying to build and how you want to apply it. But you can’t just give them money without allowing the rest of society a say; otherwise, you are just replicating the problems we have in the US, where it’s essentially technocrats or techno-authoritarians calling the shots.

You are not starting from scratch. A lot of work has already been done to establish the common goals society should strive towards. I’m talking about the Sustainable Development Goals, for example. That could be a starting point for figuring out how to fund AI innovation.

The narratives around current AI technologies are extremely polarised. On one side, you have those who say there’s nothing particularly new about these technologies, and that the bubble is about to burst. On the other, you have those who believe AI will transform our lives, revolutionise supply chains, and make us all redundant. What do you make of these different stances?

It’s true, many people tend to exaggerate the benefits without considering the costs of these technologies, or overemphasise the costs without seeing the benefits. But I think there’s quite a large percentage of people who agree that we want the benefits of AI, but not at the cost of our own ability to live a dignified life, with access to good health care, economic opportunity, a healthy environment, and a flourishing planet. That’s the most balanced approach to take.

AI is a name for many different types of technologies, and so we should be thinking carefully about which ones we invest in, which new ones we want to build, because they each come with a different set of trade-offs; some of those align with the future that we want to build, and some others don’t. We should choose wisely.

AI is a name for many different types of technologies, and so we should be thinking carefully about which ones we invest in, which new ones we want to build.

What’s your own relationship with existing AI tools?

I don’t use them for three main reasons. One, the ethical stance. Two, the privacy stance: I’m investigating these companies, and they are ultimately the most effective surveillance technologies ever invented. Three, these tools are not very useful for the particular skill set that I need to perform my job.

I’m not saying that everyone should do the same. I’ve talked with many people who clearly get something out of these tools, or are required to use them as part of their professional role. Rather, the way to get out of the current problem is to do the same that we’ve done with other industries in the past, like the fashion industry. When we discovered that many of our clothes were being produced in a really horrific way, we didn’t just get rid of clothes. There was a lot of consumer and worker organising, government regulation, and general public backlash that reined in the industry. Of course, the fashion industry is still far from perfect, but at least there are alternatives now, and consumers can vote with their wallets over what kind of supply chain and corporate practices they endorse.

We need to do the same with AI. There are not enough alternatives for users right now, and for that to change, there needs to be more labour organising and more public backlash. Those who can abstain from these technologies should absolutely boycott them, and governments should step in to help create new markets for alternatives. Consumers have an important lever to pull, but it’s not the only one. As people, as individuals, we also wear the hats of the worker, the educator, and the citizen, and we should think about how to use all those roles in relation to AI development to make it better.

Alors que les fondements de l’alliance transatlantique sont mis à rude épreuve par l’unilatéralisme croissant des États-Unis, l’Europe se voit contrainte d’envisager sa propre défense. Mais à quoi ressemblerait cette défense – et quel en serait le coût, tant sur le plan financier que politique ? Les dirigeants verts Franziska Brantner et Rui Tavares s’entretiennent avec Édouard Gaudot sur la manière dont l’Europe peut se protéger sans perdre de vue les raisons pour lesquelles elle mérite d’être protégée. 

Edouard Gaudot: En quelques mots, comment qualifiez-vous l’état de l’Europe et celui du monde ? 

Rui Tavares: Je dirais une crise généralisée de l’imagination. D’ordinaire, l’imagination vient après la guerre. Là, tout l’enjeu serait d’avoir l’imagination avant le conflit. 

Franziska Brantner: Pour moi, ce serait la confusion et le manque de courage côté européen, et, pour les Américains et le reste du monde, le retour de la puissance et de la folie. 

Rui Tavares: Tout à fait. Il y a une forme de folie qui accompagne cette absence d’imagination, comme si on vivait une réalité parallèle. 

Comment peut-on être un leader écologiste dans un monde plongé dans le chaos et les conflits ? 

Rui Tavares: Il faut être très pédagogique, et très serein à la fois, pour ne pas effrayer les gens, mais les préparer à avoir des débats politiques et à faire des choix qui sont très durs. Mais l’opinion mûrit : il y a 10 ans, il aurait été impossible de parler avec réalisme d’une communauté européenne de défense. Maintenant, tout le monde voit qu’avec Trump, si les Européens ne font pas une communauté européenne de défense, au moment décisif, ils seront démunis. 

Franziska Brantner: Je suis plutôt fière d’avoir anticipé ce débat dans un pays comme l’Allemagne. À l’époque, tout le monde me disait : « mais tu es anti-transatlantique » ; alors que j’expliquais déjà que tout cela n’a rien à voir avec les États-Unis – il s’agit de notre responsabilité. Maintenant, c’est devenu plus ou moins une évidence que les Américains ne seront pas là pour toujours pour nous. La tâche pour l’Europe est donc d’assumer et d’assurer sa sécurité et sa défense, aussi militaire.  

Ça veut dire quoi « défendre l’Europe » pour les écologistes ? 

Franziska Brantner: C’est défendre la paix et la liberté. Ça signifie que la défense de l’Europe ne peut être qu’européenne. Je remarque qu’une grande partie des adhérents du Parti Vert allemand (ils sont à ce jour plus de 180 000) ont beaucoup moins de doutes que les cadres du parti quant à la nécessité d’une capacité militaire.  

C’est surprenant quand même pour des partis, surtout en Allemagne, qui se sont construits dans les années 70, entre autres, autour du pacifisme et de la non-violence. 

Franziska Brantner: Il y a une profonde différence entre pacifisme et non-violence. Bien sûr qu’il faut promouvoir une éducation non-violente, une société non-violente. Mais ce n’est pas le pacifisme. Chez nous, c’est Joschka Fischer [ministre des Affaires étrangères d’Allemagne entre 1998 et 2005] qui a commencé cette révolution culturelle à l’époque du Kosovo. Mais avec l’Ukraine, ça a complètement basculé. Aujourd’hui, je me retrouve au centre de gravité du parti, parce que certains Verts surenchérissent tellement qu’il faut leur rappeler que les armes ne sont pas nécessairement la seule ni la meilleure réponse. 

C’est défendre la paix et la liberté. Ça signifie que la défense de l’Europe ne peut être qu’européenne.

Rui Tavares: On aurait dû avoir le débat sur l’armée européenne après s’être assurés qu’on aurait bien une démocratie européenne, avec tous les instruments de fiscalisation et un Parlement qui peut contrôler cette armée. Mais le problème, c’est que la guerre en Ukraine a installé l’urgence et renversé les priorités. Je le ressens aussi dans mon électorat – quand je suggère d’y aller prudemment, ils répondent que Poutine est à nos portes et que Trump pourrait menacer d’annexer les Açores, où il y a déjà une base américaine, comme il a menacé le Groenland. Cette question a même été posée au premier ministre, qui a répondu : « Le mieux, c’est qu’on n’en parle pas. » 

Ainsi, face à ceux qui veulent accélérer la militarisation de l’Europe, il faut rappeler que l’Europe n’est pas encore prête, car il lui manque les instruments de contrôle et de financement. 

Franziska Brantner: Parmi les verts allemands, il y a un débat sur ces questions de financement au niveau européen. Il y en a qui insistent sur cette interdiction des dépenses militaires par les traités. Même si les moyens étaient là, ils préfèrent défendre d’abord le cadre institutionnel, plutôt que de trouver des façons de faire avancer à la fois le financement et le contrôle démocratique. C’est un problème, car quand on aura trouvé la voie, il vaudrait mieux que tout cela reste sous le contrôle d’un Parlement. 

Comment doit s’articuler la défense européenne dans les équilibres géopolitiques actuels ? Quid de « l’alliance des puissances moyennes » à la Carney, de l’architecture de sécurité globale, de l’offre de parapluie nucléaire français ? 

Franziska Brantner: Il nous faut un budget européen pour la défense commune, avec des objectifs communs. Je préférerais que cela se fasse au sein des institutions, mais si pour des raisons de légalité ou de majorité c’est impossible, alors imaginons des institutions ad hoc. Quant aux alliances, il me paraît absolument nécessaire d’y intégrer le Royaume-Uni, et peut-être la Norvège. Ensuite, la Turquie ou le Canada ont aussi un rôle à jouer, mais à une échelle plus large. 

Pour le nucléaire, soyons lucides : ni a fortiori les États-Unis d’aujourd’hui, ni la France ni la Grande-Bretagne n’accepteront le partage des responsabilités, au sens de partager le pouvoir du « bouton rouge ». Néanmoins, nous devons parler entre Européens, avec la France et la Grande-Bretagne, au sujet d’une doctrine nucléaire européenne. En contrepartie, nous devrons évidemment financer davantage le conventionnel. 

Et la contrepartie politique ? La garantie nucléaire induit une forme de leadership stratégique que les partenaires de la France ne sont peut-être pas prêts à accepter et que la France n’est peut-être pas prête à assumer ? 

Franziska Brantner: C’est possible, mais on n’a pas le choix. La menace de Poutine est réelle et le recul de Trump aussi. Je souhaiterais tellement que nous vivions dans un monde meilleur, mais ce n’est pas ainsi. Si on n’y arrive pas en Europe, il y a déjà des conservateurs allemands qui proposent une force de frappe allemande – je pense que c’est une très mauvaise idée, même si l’Allemagne en aurait les capacités. D’une part, cela violerait notre constitution, et de l’autre, les traités internationaux. 

Rui Tavares: Sur la garantie nucléaire française, la vitesse du débat est étonnante. Ces choses, normalement, avancent à une lenteur glaciale, mais là on l’envisage concrètement. Selon moi, il faudrait faire quelque chose de très simple, mais très visible : inscrire l’emploi du nucléaire français dans le cadre de l’article 47 du traité, qui parle de venir en aide à l’État membre menacé avec « toutes les ressources » – donc l’arsenal nucléaire aussi. 

Quant à cette alliance des puissances moyennes, ça me chagrine toujours un peu qu’on s’arrête au Canada. Et le Brésil, le Mexique, les autres pays ? Voilà des partenaires stratégiques. 

Franziska Brantner: Je crois qu’on les aborde surtout par les intérêts économiques et politiques. 

Rui Tavares: C’est vrai, mais c’est aussi que les Européens négligent ce que ces pays-là disent sur l’état du monde, sur le développement, sur les réformes de l’ONU. Ils ne veulent pas écouter ce que le Brésil aurait à dire aussi sur les questions de la mémoire de l’esclavage, par exemple. Ces pays veulent parler de ça aussi. Si l’Europe veut contrer les puissances autoritaires en ralliant ces puissances moyennes peu attachées au système international fondé sur l’ONU et les règles partagées, nous devons nous mettre à leur écoute – car ces partenaires potentiels en ont marre de l’arrogance européenne. C’est pour ça que nous avons échoué à les engager pleinement dans le soutien à l’Ukraine. L’Europe doit sortir de ses évidences et de sa zone de confort. 

Franziska Brantner: Je crois qu’il y a quand même une différence à faire entre les liens économiques, voire politiques et stratégiques, et les liens de défense. Je suis tout à fait d’accord avec toi sur les premiers, mais pour la défense européenne, je suis moins convaincue. 

Rui Tavares: Pourtant, si tu prends l’exemple de la sécurité contre les narcotrafics dans l’Atlantique du Sud, il faudra parler avec les Sud-Américains. 

Outre les alliances, la « défense de l’Europe en Européens » passe par les questions industrielles. Un budget militaire, soit, mais pour quoi faire ? 

Rui Tavares: Quand les Américains ont construit leur puissance militaire au lendemain de la guerre, ils ont fait des investissements publics colossaux dans la recherche, à travers le MIT et des programmes spécifiques. On sait tous que l’Internet est directement issu de ce genre de recherche. Je trouve inquiétant que la révolution de l’intelligence artificielle, fondamentale dans le domaine de la défense, soit complètement dominée, commandée et organisée par le privé – sans aucune participation publique. Là, l’Europe aurait une énorme opportunité historique de faire des investissements publics massifs, surtout dans la recherche, la science et la technologie, avec des objectifs ambitieux. 

Si on montre que la recherche militaire produit des avancées civiles, on peut sortir de ce piège très efficace qui force les électorats à choisir entre avoir les moyens d’un modèle social et avoir les moyens de le défendre.

Franziska Brantner: En Europe, c’est l’Ukraine qui fait ça. Ce sont les plus créatifs et innovants. Plus encore que les États-Unis. 

À ce propos, comment répondre à la question piège qui dénonce le sacrifice des dépenses sociales sur l’autel des dépenses militaires ? 

Franziska Brantner:  D’abord, il nous faut un marché de la défense unique et intégré, avec des économies d’échelle à la clé et une capacité de créer ainsi notre souveraineté technologique, par exemple l’IA. Ceci doit être fait d’une manière à générer des gains technologiques et économiques, des « dividendes de la défense » pour la productivité et la souveraineté industrielles européennes.  

Mais il est évident qu’on ne peut financer longtemps la défense qu’à travers la dette. Dans le budget allemand, il y a déjà aujourd’hui 80 milliards d’euros annuels de services de la dette. On s’attend à 40 milliards de dettes supplémentaires rien que pour la défense. Pour les plus jeunes générations, c’est intenable. Et il y a aussi le risque d’une dette non soutenable qui peut nous coûter très cher, au sens économique et ensuite social. Donc à un moment, soit on augmente les ressources, soit il faut couper quelque part.  

Il faut aussi devenir plus efficace économiquement. Si la productivité ne progresse plus, ça va nécessairement peser sur le reste du budget. On a eu de la chance, pendant 80 ans, mais les « dividendes de la paix » sont finis. 

En revanche, il y aura des dividendes des dépenses publiques pour la défense, dont il faut s’assurer qu’ils ne soient pas accaparés par les plus riches. Voilà une autre façon de reposer la question de la répartition public-privé. Et soyons lucides : Nous avons besoin d’une industrie de la défense européenne pour protéger notre paix et notre modèle de vie – ce qui à terme produira de nouveaux dividendes, d’une paix nouvelle et souveraine.  

Rui Tavares: Je suis en désaccord sur ça. Je ne voudrais pas revivre les débats de la crise de la zone euro, qui ont été vraiment très douloureux. Il y a une différence, peut-être culturelle, entre Nord et Sud, sur cette question de la dette. Quand on me dit qu’il faut investir dans les dépenses militaires pour répondre aux défis internationaux et qu’il n’est pas sérieux de ne pas prendre sur les dépenses sociales, je réponds que l’investissement sur la défense sans dette, c’est cela qui n’est pas sérieux. L’effort militaire a toujours coûté cher. Si on prend au sérieux une menace existentielle, on ne se tracasse pas à cause de la dette. D’autant que dans le passé, les investissements militaires ont tous été accompagnés ou suivis de près par de nouveaux investissements dans le social. 

Imaginons : il y a une crise du logement en Europe, une question très concrète pour beaucoup de gens. Si on développait de nouvelles technologies de construction, avec de nouveaux matériaux issus de la recherche, si on avait une agence européenne du logement, on pourrait encourager ces progrès. Et puisque les armées ont toujours été pleines d’ingénieurs, il peut y avoir là un bénéfice de l’investissement militaire – un dividende de guerre. 

Si on montre que la recherche militaire produit des avancées civiles, on peut sortir de ce piège très efficace qui force les électorats à choisir entre avoir les moyens d’un modèle social et avoir les moyens de le défendre. En ce sens, l’Allemagne a un rôle clé : il faut que les Allemands comprennent que l’Europe est prête à investir dans une dette sûre. Maintenant que la dette américaine n’est plus sûre, si les Européens font enfin le choix des fameux Eurobonds, il y aura des milliards d’euros prêts à être investis. 

Franziska Brantner: À condition que ce soient vraiment des investissements. Sinon ces ressources sont gaspillées, et ce sont les générations suivantes qui doivent financer. On a engagé près de 100 milliards de dettes pour la défense et 99% de cet argent est allé dans des trucs du passé. 

Il faut donc développer un complexe militaro-industriel européen, qui produise du futur, pas qui comble le passé ? 

Franziska Brantner: Voilà. Il faut rompre avec les inerties du passé. C’est le cas aussi dans notre modèle social en Allemagne : il y a des réformes qui améliorent la qualité des services et permettent en même temps des économies, et il faut les faire. On ne peut pas juste refuser l’économie, c’est impossible. Surtout avec une société qui vieillit. On ne peut pas se cacher derrière les faux-semblants. Je pense qu’il faut investir dans la défense, réformer le secteur économique et social.  

Comment est-ce qu’on prépare les populations aux réalités de la menace et aux réponses ? 

Rui Tavares: J’ai beaucoup aimé le rapport Niinistö, parce qu’il transmet aux Européens le savoir-faire des Nordiques sur ces questions de défense, qui reposent sur la société, les familles, les liens. On peut reproduire certaines choses comme les livrets sur la sécurité chez soi, la défense de proximité, qu’on peut imprimer et donner à tous les foyers européens. Ensuite, il faut tenir compte des réalités culturelles et sociales : s’il faut avoir deux semaines de vivres à la maison pour être préparé, au Portugal, le 10 du mois, quand le salaire est déjà dépensé, je suis sûr que le kit de sécurité ne tient pas. 

Il faut donc peut-être penser aussi à des réseaux de distribution. Mobiliser les mairies d’arrondissement. Inclure les pompiers. Ce sont autant d’opportunités de faire une Europe tangible. Quand on a des inondations, des incendies catastrophiques, les gens s’attendent à une réponse européenne. Avec ce type de kit européen de réponse aux guerres et aux catastrophes, qui pourrait être distribué, ce serait plus clair. 

Franziska Brantner: Je crains que ça ne marche pas, que sans l’urgence, les gens ne soient pas prêts. 

Au-delà de la base industrielle et technologique de défense européenne, quelle politique industrielle faut-il mettre en œuvre à l’échelle de l’UE ? 

Franziska Brantner: Je pense que la compétitivité européenne repose sur trois piliers. D’abord la résilience, avec la réduction de nos dépendances, surtout de la Chine et des États-Unis. Ensuite, l’innovation. Pas seulement dans la défense, mais aussi dans le numérique, la bioéconomie, la médecine. Et enfin, le troisième, c’est la question de la durabilité, pour répondre au changement climatique et aussi aux inégalités. Je veux qu’à la sortie des écoles, il y ait à nouveau une majorité de parents qui pensent que leurs enfants iront mieux qu’eux. Pour ça, il nous faut une éducation qui développe les compétences et les capacités d’innovation de nos jeunes. C’est une compétitivité au service du bien-être social, de la qualité de vie.  

Quelles priorités voyez-vous pour le futur de l’Europe? Selon vous, qu’est-ce qui fait aujourd’hui la cohésion européenne et l’actualité du projet européen ? 

Franziska Brantner: Je pense que la question à se poser est d’abord : « Pourquoi on veut la paix, la liberté et la démocratie ? » Pour nous, Européens, l’enjeu est de donner un sens à la liberté qui ne soit pas celui de JD Vance et un contenu à la paix qui ne soit pas celui de Poutine. C’est à nous de le faire, parce que c’est l’Europe qui porte ces valeurs-là. Et sans elles, le projet européen est vide. 

Rui Tavares: Je suis tout à fait d’accord, et je voudrais ajouter une notion : la qualité de vie. Quand on regarde l’Europe depuis l’extérieur, ce qui la caractérise, c’est une façon de vivre et des standards de qualité de vie. Notre idée de liberté se construit dans le droit universel à cette qualité de vie. Ça ne veut pas dire que tout le monde est riche, mais ça veut sûrement dire que personne n’est pauvre. En mettant cette notion au centre des politiques européennes, on voit rapidement que ça englobe tout : l’économique, le social, l’environnement, la culture, la sécurité, la défense. 

Ce qui m’inquiète, c’est que j’ai l’impression que la qualité de vie a cessé d’être un objectif de la politique. On entend des discours qui proposent de sacrifier tel ou tel service pour faire des économies. Mais je pense qu’épargner pour épargner, ça ne dit rien aux Européens. Personne ne veut être compétitif pour gagner une guerre économique dont on ne voit pas les bénéfices. En revanche, les Européens sont fiers et attachés à leur qualité de vie et pour de bonnes raisons. Si on réussit à les convaincre que les politiques proposées prennent cette qualité de vie au sérieux, je pense que les gens accepteront plus facilement les sacrifices.

As the foundations of the transatlantic alliance strain under the weight of the US’s growing unilateralism, Europe is being forced to imagine a defence of its own. But what would that defence look like – and what would it cost, financially and politically? Green leaders Franziska Brantner and Rui Tavares talk to Edouard Gaudot about how Europe can protect itself without losing sight of why it’s worth protecting.

Edouard Gaudot: Amid heightened geopolitical tension and the growing prevalence of military conflict, can you briefly describe the state of Europe and the world today? 

Rui Tavares: I’d say there’s a general crisis of imagination. Usually, imagination comes after war. But today, the challenge is finding imagination before conflict. 

Franziska Brantner: For me, it’s confusion and a lack of courage from Europeans, and from the Americans and the rest of the world, it’s the return of madness and “might makes right.” 

Rui Tavares: Exactly. There’s a form of madness that comes with this absence of imagination, as if we’re living in a parallel reality. 

What does green leadership look like in a world plunged into chaos and conflict? 

Rui Tavares: We need to educate people but stay calm at the same time. We must avoid scaring them and instead prepare them for political debates and tough choices. Public opinion matures: 10 years ago, it would have been impossible to talk realistically about a European defence community. Now, with Trump, everyone can see that if the Europeans don’t create one, they’ll be defenceless at the decisive moment. 

Franziska Brantner: I’m rather proud to have seen this debate taking shape in a country like Germany. Previously, everyone would say to me, “You’re just an anti-Atlanticist,” even as I explained that my emphasis on defence autonomy had nothing to do with the United States but was about our responsibility. Now, it’s become very clear that the Americans won’t always be there for us. The task for Europe, then, is to step up and take responsibility for its own defence and security.  

For the Greens, defending Europe means safeguarding peace and freedom. Therefore, Europe’s defence can only be European. I note that many German Green party members (of whom there are over 180,000 today) have far fewer reservations than the party’s leaders do about the need for a stronger military capability.  

That’s surprising for a party that was founded in the 1970s on, among other things, pacifism and non-violence. 

Franziska Brantner: There’s a profound difference between pacifism and non-violence. Of course, we must promote non-violent education and a non-violent society, but that isn’t pacifism. In our party, it was Joschka Fischer [German foreign minister from 1998 to 2005] who started this cultural shift at the time of the Kosovo conflict. But with Ukraine, everything changed. Today I find myself in the party’s centre, because some Greens have gone so far that they need reminding that weapons are not necessarily the only answer, nor the best. 

For the Greens, defending Europe means safeguarding peace and freedom. Therefore, Europe’s defence can only be European.

Rui Tavares: Ideally, we would be having this debate on a European army after making sure that we really have a European democracy, with full tax-raising powers and a parliament that could oversee this army. But the war in Ukraine has brought urgency and upended priorities. I sense it in my voters [in Portugal], too: when I suggest moving cautiously, they reply that Putin is at the gates and that Trump could threaten to annex the Azores – where there is already an American base – just as he threatened Greenland. This question was even put to the prime minister, whose answer was: “It’s best we don’t talk about it.” 

So, to those who want to accelerate Europe’s militarisation, we must point out that Europe is not yet ready because it lacks the mechanisms for oversight and funding. 

Franziska Brantner: Among German Greens, there’s a debate about funding at the European level. Some insist that European treaties prohibit military spending. And even if the resources were there, they would rather defend the institutional framework than find ways to move ahead on funding and democratic oversight. This is a problem, because once we find the path forward, it would be better if all this remained under parliamentary oversight. 

What about the “alliance of middle powers” proposed by Mark Carney, the global security architecture, and the French nuclear umbrella? How should European defence fit into the current geopolitical landscape?  

Franziska Brantner: We need a European budget for common defence, with common goals. I’d rather this were created within the institutions, but if it’s impossible for reasons of legality or majority, let’s devise ad hoc institutions. As for alliances, it’s absolutely essential to include the United Kingdom, and maybe Norway. Turkey and Canada also have roles to play, but on a broader level. 

When it comes to nuclear weapons, let’s be clear-eyed: neither the United States – especially today – nor France nor the United Kingdom will agree to sharing responsibility, in the sense of sharing the power to press the “red button”. That said, Europeans must talk to each other, to France and the United Kingdom, about a European nuclear doctrine. In return, we will obviously have to increase funding for conventional weapons. 

A nuclear guarantee would entail a sort of strategic leadership from France that its partners may not be willing to allow, and that Paris may not be willing to accept.  

Franziska Brantner: That’s possible, but we don’t have a choice. Putin’s threat is real, and so is Trump’s retreat. I really wish we lived in a better world, but we don’t. If Europe can’t do it, there are already German conservatives proposing a German nuclear deterrent. I think this is a very bad idea, even if Germany has the capability. It would violate both our constitution and international treaties. 

Rui Tavares: On the French nuclear guarantee, the speed of the debate is astonishing. These things usually move forward at a glacial pace, but this is now actually being considered. I think we need to do something very simple, but very visible: expand French nuclear doctrine to include Article 42.7 of the Treaty on European Union. It talks about coming to the aid of threatened member states with all available resources. That would mean nuclear weapons, too. 

As for this alliance of middle powers, it always bothers me a bit that we stop at Canada. What about Brazil, Mexico, and other countries? There’s some strategic partners for you. 

Franziska Brantner: I think that our approach to them is primarily driven by economic and political interests. 

Rui Tavares: True, but Europeans also ignore what these countries say about the state of the world, about development and UN reforms. They don’t want to listen to what Brazil might also have to say about the remembrance of slavery, for example. If Europe wants to counter authoritarian powers by courting middle powers that are not particularly invested in the UN-led rules-based international order, we need to listen to them. These potential partners are fed up with European arrogance, and that’s why we failed to secure their full backing for Ukraine. Europe must challenge its assumptions and get out of its comfort zone. 

Franziska Brantner: I still think there’s a distinction to be made between economic ties – political and strategic ties even – and defence ties. I completely agree with you on the first three, but when it comes to European defence, I’m less convinced. 

Rui Tavares: But to fight drug trafficking in the South Atlantic, for example, you’ll have to speak to the South Americans. 

Alliances aside, a European defence of Europe means grappling with questions of industrial policy. A military budget is all well and good, but what for? 

Rui Tavares: When the Americans built up their military power after the [Second World] War, they made colossal public investments in research through the likes of MIT and special programmes. As we all know, the Internet was a direct result of this type of research. So I find it worrying that the revolution in artificial intelligence, fundamental in the realm of defence, is completely driven, shaped, and dominated by the private sector, with no public involvement. Here, Europe has an enormous historic opportunity to make massive public investments – especially in research, science, and technology – with ambitious goals. 

If we show that military research produces civilian advances, we can escape this pernicious trap that forces voters to choose between funding a welfare state and funding its defence.

Franziska Brantner: In Europe, it’s the Ukrainians who are doing this. They are the most creative and innovative. Even more so than the Americans. 

And how should we respond to those who claim social spending is being sacrificed on the altar of military expenditure? 

Franziska Brantner:  First of all, we need a single, integrated defence market with economies of scale and the capacity to develop our own technological sovereignty, in AI for example. This must be done in a way that delivers technological and economic benefits – “defence dividends” for European industrial productivity and sovereignty.  

But it’s obvious that in the long run we can’t fund defence through borrowing. Germany already spends 80 billion euros a year on servicing debt. An extra 40 billion euros of debt is expected to be added just for defence. For younger generations, it’s unsustainable. And there’s also the risk that unsustainable borrowing could cost us dearly, both economically and socially. So at some point, we must either increase resources or make cuts somewhere.  

We also have to become more economically efficient. If productivity stops growing, it will put more pressure on the budget. We got lucky for 80 years, but the peace dividend is gone. 

That said, there will be dividends from public spending on defence, though we’ll have to make sure that they’re not pocketed by the richest. That’s another way of asking how we draw the line between public and private.  

Let’s be clear about this: we need a European defence industry to protect our peace and our way of life – and in the long run, this will pay fresh dividends from a new and sovereign peace.  

Rui Tavares: This is where I disagree with you. I don’t want to reopen arguments from the Eurozone crisis, which was extremely painful. But there’s a difference, perhaps cultural, between north and south on the question of debt. When I’m told that we must invest in defence spending to meet global challenges and that doing so without cutting social spending is unrealistic, my response is that investing in defence without borrowing is what’s unrealistic. Military investment has always been expensive. If we take an existential threat seriously, we don’t fret about debt. Especially given that, in the past, military investment has always been accompanied or followed by new social investment. 

Just take into account the fact that there’s a housing crisis in Europe, an issue that’s very real for many people. If we developed construction technologies, with new materials invented through research and development, and if we had a European housing agency, we could build on this progress. And since armies have always been full of engineers, this might be another benefit of military spending – a war dividend. 

If we show that military research produces civilian advances, we can escape this pernicious trap that forces voters to choose between funding a welfare state and funding its defence. This is where Germany has a key role to play: Germans must understand that Europe is willing to invest in safe debt. Now that American debt is no longer safe, if Europeans were to finally opt for the famous Eurobonds, there would be billions of euros ready to invest. 

Franziska Brantner: So long as these are really investments. Otherwise, they’re a waste of resources, and future generations will have to pay for them. We’ve taken on almost 100 billion euros in defence debt, and 99 per cent of this money has gone into stuff that’s obsolete. 

So, we need to develop a European military-industrial complex, one that builds for the future, not the past. 

Franziska Brantner: Exactly. We must break free from past inertias. It’s also the case for our welfare state in Germany: there are reforms that will improve the quality of services while also making savings, and they have to be implemented. We can’t just refuse to make savings. It’s impossible, especially with an ageing society. We can’t hide behind false pretexts. I think we have to invest in defence while also reforming the economy and public services.  

How do we prepare people for the reality of the security threats facing Europe and the responses they require? 

Rui Tavares: I loved the Niinistö report [drawn up by Sauli Niinistö, former president of Finland and special adviser to the president of the European Commission] because it shares with the rest of Europe Nordic know-how on defence, which is based around society, families, and bonds. Some materials – like booklets on preparedness and local defence – can be reproduced, printed, and distributed to all European households. But it’s important to take into account cultural and social realities: you’re supposed to have two weeks’ supplies in the house to be prepared, but in Portugal, where wages are often spent by the 10th of the month, I’m sure the survival kit won’t last. 

So, we should perhaps think about distribution networks, mobilise local councils, and even involve the fire service. These are also opportunities to make Europe tangible. When devastating fires or floods break out, people expect a European response. With a European war and disaster survival kit that could be distributed to citizens, Europe’s role in helping people would be clearer to see. 

Franziska Brantner: I fear that it won’t work – that without a sense of urgency, people won’t be ready. 

Besides the European defence technological and industrial base, what industrial policy should be implemented at the EU level? 

Franziska Brantner: I believe European competitiveness rests on three pillars. First, resilience, which requires a reduction in our dependencies, especially on China and the United States. Next, innovation. Not just in defence, but in tech, medicine, the bioeconomy. And the third is sustainability, which is a necessary response to climate change and inequality.  

To succeed, we need education that develops our young people’s skills and capacity for innovation. It’s competitiveness in the service of social wellbeing and a better quality of life.  

Going forward, what objectives do you think Europe should prioritise? How can the European project gain more relevance and foster cohesion?  

Franziska Brantner: I think the question we must ask ourselves first is: “Why do we want peace, freedom, and democracy?” For us Europeans, the challenge is to give a meaning to freedom that isn’t JD Vance’s, and a substance to peace that isn’t Putin’s. It’s up to us to do this, because it’s Europe that upholds these values. And without them, the European project is hollow. 

Rui Tavares: I couldn’t agree more, and I’d like to add another idea: quality of life. Seen from the outside, Europe is defined by a way of life and a standard of living. Our notion of freedom is built on a universal right to this quality of life. It doesn’t mean that everybody is rich, but it does mean that nobody is poor. When we put this idea at the core of European policies, we soon see that it touches on everything: the economy, social policy, the environment, culture, security, and defence. 

What worries me is a sense that the quality of life has stopped being a goal of politics. We keep hearing calls to sacrifice this or that service to save money. But I think that saving for saving’s sake doesn’t appeal to Europeans. Nobody wants to stay competitive just to win an economic war they don’t see any benefits in. Europeans are proud of their quality of life and are deeply attached to it – and for good reason. If we manage to convince them that the policies that affect them take this quality of life seriously, I think people will be more willing to make sacrifices. 

Forty years after the world’s worst man-made disaster at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Belarus is aggressively expanding its nuclear ambitions, declaring its readiness to build a second plant. This effort is bankrolled and managed by Russia, which has already financed two reactors in Ostrovets and is now planning a third. But how did the nation that suffered most from the Chornobyl catastrophe come to embrace the “peaceful atom”, and why have anti-nuclear activists been unable to halt this trajectory?

The explosion at Chornobyl on 26 April 1986 left Belarus as the primary “target” of the radioactive plume. Due to prevailing winds in the disaster’s immediate aftermath, approximately 35 per cent of all caesium-137 fallout in Europe landed on Belarusian soil, despite the plant being located in Ukraine. 

The radiation forced the evacuation of 470 villages and towns. Some were literally buried – homes and farmstead buildings bulldozed into the earth to contain high doses of radiation. Estimates suggest that between 140,000 and 300,000 Belarusians left their homes forever; some fled voluntarily, while others were forcibly relocated by the state. 

Belarus was also forced to withdraw 2,640 square kilometres of agricultural land from use – an area larger than the territory of Luxembourg. Radiation contaminated over 20 per cent of the country’s farmland, permanently altering the economic structure of what was once a predominantly agrarian nation. A quarter of Belarusian forests absorbed dangerous radionuclides like a sponge, making the gathering of berries, mushrooms, and the use of firewood hazardous even four decades later. 

In the first decade following the disaster, Belarus faced an unprecedented surge in thyroid cancer, particularly in the Gomel and Brest regions. Cases among children skyrocketed tenfold – a direct consequence of the “iodine shock” caused by Soviet authorities concealing the disaster while people celebrated May Day outdoors. 

Nowadays, official data suggests that one in ten Belarusians – including 180,000 children – still lives in radioactive contamination zones. Their bodies are exposed daily to low doses of radiation through local food and the environment. 

Meanwhile, state propaganda has begun to “forget” Chornobyl, framing its consequences as a historical event that has been successfully overcome. Assistance programs have been curtailed, and benefits for “liquidators” (recovery workers) have been revoked. Today, Belarus is ploughing land once deemed contaminated, grazing livestock on it, and harvesting timber from radioactive forests for export. Official health statistics no longer link thyroid disease or oncology to the 1986 disaster. Belarusians are being told that radiation is no longer a threat – and may even be beneficial. Yet warnings can still be found between the lines of specialised journals, which, for instance, continue to advise fishermen on how to cook fish that may contain caesium-137. 

The Kremlin’s geopolitical leash  

Despite the collective trauma of Chornobyl, President Alexander Lukashenko decided to build Belarus’s first nuclear power plant in 2008. The regime marketed it as a cutting-edge, safe project that would grant Belarus energy independence and cheap electricity. 

Defying expectations, the site chosen for the nuclear power plant was not in the already contaminated zones, but Ostrovets, a pristine area near the border with Lithuania (an EU and NATO member). On clear days, the cooling towers of the Belarusian NPP (BelNPP) in Ostrovets are visible from Gediminas Hill in Vilnius. 

Lacking the technology and capital to complete the project independently, Lukashenko turned to Russia for a 10-billion-dollar loan. Predictably, the Russian state nuclear enterprise Rosatom became the general contractor. The construction was plagued by scandals: the first reactor vessel was dropped during installation, and the second was damaged during rail transport. Nevertheless, the plant was inaugurated in November 2020, timed to coincide with the anniversary of the October Revolution in typical Soviet fashion. 

At the ceremony, Lukashenko remarked: “A little time will pass, and we will fully realise what a feat we have accomplished with the support of our elder brothers… I’m only half-joking when I say that since we’ve learned how, we should build a second plant.” 

However, the following years were marked by technical failures and unscheduled shutdowns. Six years after its launch, experts note that the plant has failed to deliver cheaper energy; in fact, electricity prices in Belarus have risen. Furthermore, the country now faces the massive expense of building its own spent nuclear fuel storage. 

The structural mismatch in Belarus’s energy strategy became painfully clear in 2024. According to the energy ministry, fully absorbing the output of just two nuclear units would require an annual demand surge of 18.5 billion kWh. However, with domestic consumption growing by a mere 6 billion kWh over the last five years, the project has become a white elephant. To make BelNPP economically viable, the country would need to consume in a single year what the plant has cumulatively generated over the past five. 

As a result, Belarus has effectively been placed on a 10-billion-dollar geopolitical leash. “Energy is the backbone of the economy, and in this, we are dependent on Russia,” notes Irina Sukhiy, an anti-nuclear activist and expert with the Green Belarus Alliance, which brings together Belarusian NGOs, experts, local communities, and activists. “If our eastern neighbours choose, they can cut off gas or stop supplying nuclear fuel.” 

Vanishing hopes for еxport 

In February 2025, the three Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) officially decoupled from the BRELL grid (connecting Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and began dismantling infrastructure on their borders with Belarus and with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. 

“We no longer have ties with Russia and Belarus; the energy system is in our hands,” declared Lithuanian Energy Minister Žygimantas Vaičiūnas. This synchronisation with continental Europe, accelerated by Russia’s war in Ukraine, dealt a serious blow to Minsk’s export ambitions. Lithuania, once the primary hub for Belarusian electricity, has not only closed its borders but also legally banned the purchase of energy from Ostrovets. 

A year before, Lithuania’s nuclear power safety regulator, VATESI, had issued a formal demand to the Belarusian Ministry of Emergency Situations, insisting that the BelNPP halt operations until all outstanding safety concerns are fully addressed. VATESI underscored that since the project’s inception, Minsk has prioritised rapid construction and commissioning over rigorous quality control – a particularly alarming strategy for a facility located a mere 40 kilometres from the Lithuanian capital. “This irresponsible approach is increasingly manifested in frequent unplanned shutdowns and power fluctuations,” the regulator noted, suggesting that such systemic instabilities were likely overlooked or ignored during the critical construction and installation phases. 

Beyond technical failures, VATESI accused the Belarusian regime of systemic opacity. The regulator claimed that Minsk consistently conceals critical data regarding BelNPP’s unstable performance, emergency scrams, and protracted maintenance periods. Rather than accepting vague official explanations, the Lithuanian authorities are now demanding full disclosure on radionuclide emission limits, the publication of all international expert mission recommendations, and transparent reports on their implementation. Such data, the regulator insists, is indispensable for the accurate modelling and forecasting of potential radioactive releases in the event of a major accident. 

Meanwhile, Minsk shows no signs of slowing its nuclear expansion. Following the 2023 commissioning of the second unit at the Ostrovets plant, the regime signalled a further push in 2025 with plans for a third reactor. According to Energy Minister Denis Moroz, this new unit is slated for operation between 2035 and 2038. This trajectory has drawn a sharp rebuke from Vilnius. Lithuanian presidential adviser Deividas Matulionis said that the third unit represents a qualitative leap in the regional threat level. He warned that, while the first two reactors were already a source of deep concern, a further expansion would pose an even more formidable security challenge. 

According to Evgeny Makarchuk, an energy security specialist at the International Strategic Action Network for Security, this stance has deprived Belarus of access to the Nord Pool power exchange market. Under different political conditions, Belarus could export up to 2.1 billion kWh per year, generating revenue of 230 million euros. Instead, the BelNPP generates a huge surplus of electricity with nowhere to sell. Ukraine is closed due to the war, and Poland maintains a strict sanctions regime. While this surplus could theoretically flow eastward, Russia itself suffers from excess capacity and has no need for Belarusian kilowatts at market prices.  

“Strategic isolation has effectively turned Belarus into an energy island,” notes Sukhiy. The Ostrovets plant was originally conceived as a profitable route to Western markets, but the collapse of the BRELL network has turned it into a structural dead end. Instead of a bridge to Europe, the plant now functions as an isolated asset, operating solely within the Kremlin’s broader energy and political manoeuvres. 

Tightening control 

Technical incidents at the Ostrovets plant have sparked concern in Europe about whether Minsk has learned the lessons of Chernobyl. The regime’s secrecy and the lack of independent monitoring only exacerbate the atmosphere of persistent mistrust between Belarus and its neighbours. 

The tension further increased at the end of 2025, when the Russian defence ministry announced the deployment of the nuclear-capable hypersonic Oreshnik missile system in Belarus. Lukashenko presented the move as a means to ensure Belarus’s security.  

According to Lithuania’s national security threat assessment, the BelNPP has now become the central element of the regional threat. By deploying the Oreshnik missile system and tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, the Kremlin has effectively blurred the lines between civilian energy production and aggressive military strategy. Lithuanian intelligence emphasises that the persistent lack of transparency regarding the plant’s operations and the proposed expansion of the facility are being used as psychological leverage against Vilnius. 

Beyond the safety concerns, officials view Russia’s state-owned giant, Rosatom, as a tool of geopolitical influence.  

Belarus has effectively been placed on a 10-billion-dollar geopolitical leash.

The (r)evolution that never happened 

Today, the BelNPP has become a monument to Belarus’s authoritarian regime. Dmitry Kuchuk, an environmental policy advisor to exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, believes this is a problem the future must solve. “You can’t just flip a switch and close it immediately. We will need a serious audit of the plant’s condition and safety before deciding its fate,” he says. As the former head of the Belarusian Green Party, Kuchuk personally advocates for the plant’s closure: “The sooner the better for the budget and the country’s development”. 

However, the Belarusian government has turned a deaf ear to the warnings of experts and environmental activists. “Belarusians are categorically opposed to nuclear power, and it must be understood that the decision to build the NPP was made by Lukashenko alone. He ignored even his own Academy of Sciences, whose experts argued that the country simply did not need such a plant and that existing capacities were sufficient,” says Kuchuk. 

Belarusian authorities did initially signal a pivot towards renewable energy development. In 2010, the country passed a law on renewable energy sources (RES), which aimed to incentivise producers and provide tax breaks. However, the subsequent pivot toward nuclear energy effectively brought the development of renewables to a standstill.  

In 2018, a study titled “Energy [r]evolution”, supported by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, showed that Belarus had the potential to reach 92 per cent renewable energy by 2050. The report examined two distinct scenarios. The first was based on existing state strategies, which prioritised natural gas and the expansion of nuclear power. The second was a “revolutionary” scenario focused on the aggressive development of solar and wind energy. “Our research demonstrated that Belarus possesses enough potential to transition to 92 per cent renewable energy by 2050. And that was based on technology available back in 2018,” says Sukhiy from the Green Belarus Alliance. “Naturally, such a transition requires significant upfront investment. However, these calculations show that, in the long term, this path is more economically viable than the scenario chosen by the state.” 

It is symbolic that Belarus’s first wind turbine – a 250-kilowatt Nordex unit standing 50 meters tall – appeared in 2000 as part of a project to assist those resettled from the Chernobyl zone. It was installed near the village of Stakhoutsy, close to Lake Narach in the country’s most pristine region. By road, it stands just 60 kilometres from the BelNPP – and even closer as the crow flies. 

Path to a green future 

Belarusian civil society, now largely operating from abroad, is rethinking national and regional security through the prism of energy. “It’s impossible to build a free state if its ‘energy heart’ runs on foreign fuel, is serviced by foreign specialists, and is burdened with foreign debt,” proclaims Sukhiy. 

“By creating a vision of a green Belarus and working on a green transition, we are laying the foundation for Belarus’s independence, reducing its critical dependence on Russian energy resources, and ensuring that Belarus becomes a modern country rather than remaining stuck in the past,” she adds.  

Central and Eastern Europe’s post-communist history suggests that during any democratic transition, Moscow might attempt to crush reforms by “turning off the tap”. In 2006, after the “Orange Revolution” brought a pro-Western government to power in Ukraine, tensions between Moscow and Kyiv escalated. Russia’s Gazprom cut off gas supplies to Ukraine following a dispute over pricing and debt. Another incident occurred in 2009, when Russia stopped all gas flows through Ukraine to Europe.  

In Moldova, after pro-European forces came to power in 2020-2021, Russia sharply increased gas prices, forcing Chișinău to seek new suppliers, including those in Romania and other EU countries. This crisis was a clear instrument of political pressure. 

However, according to energy security expert Makarchuk, “this does not mean that the future is predetermined. Crises occur where there is a lack of preparedness. If we start acting now, the consequences can be mitigated, and disasters for the people and the economy can be avoided.” 

To achieve this, Belarus will have to make a series of critical strategic decisions in the very first hours of its genuine independence from the Kremlin. The diversification of the energy market and a departure from total reliance on Russian energy sources must become a prerequisite for any future democratic transition. 

“Technically, I see opportunities to completely break our dependence on Russia. We have our own oil refineries capable of processing up to 24 million tons of oil, while our domestic market requires only six million tons. We have assessed our oil import capacity: approximately 1.5 million tons can be obtained from Lithuania and about two million from Poland. All of this can be processed to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, and fuel oil. Furthermore, crude oil and petroleum products can be imported by rail,” Makarchuk notes. 

Ultimately, securing Belarus’s sovereign future depends on sustained solidarity and strategic cooperation among its neighbours. This path cannot be taken in isolation; it requires coordinated regional efforts and strong support from the broader European community to transform Belarus’s energy independence from a national dream into a pillar of European security. 

This will be difficult, given that Belarus has sided with Russia, distancing itself from and alienating its neighbours. However, experts will not insist on a green transition for Belarus.“The assertion that Belarus cannot exist without Russian oil and gas is not entirely accurate. Yes, the stakes are high: in 2023, the gap between preferential prices for Russian gas and global market prices was 4.2 billion dollars. However, with sound policy, careful preparation, and supply diversification, the crisis can be overcome. It need not be a catastrophe for the Belarusian people,” Makarchuk adds. 

As for the Ostrovets power plant, experts agree that its presence during Belarus’s transformation will help balance the country’s energy system. However, in the long term, Belarus can meet its energy needs without the plant, especially given the country’s strong potential to develop renewable energy sources. Whether the political will for such a major change exists, however, is another question.  

For almost century, Europe’s agriculture has been structurally reliant on chemical fertilisers. The risks of this dependence have been made amply clear by successive conflicts that have disrupted supply chains, while decades of intensive application have led to pollution and soil imbalances. Changing this trajectory will be a tough challenge.

In France, the baguette has recently become a matter of public concern. According to the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety (ANSES), staples of the French diet like bread, cereals, and even potatoes are among the main pathways of exposure to cadmium, a carcinogenic heavy metal that accumulates in agricultural soils. While cadmium is naturally present in the environment, its levels in France have become increasingly concerning over the past two decades, prompting ANSES to issue warnings that a significant share of the population is estimated to exceed health-based reference exposure values, with higher levels observed among children and adolescents. At the core of this looming public health crisis lies the intensive use of phosphate-based fertilisers. 

As the French Parliament moved to tighten cadmium limits in agricultural soils this spring – finally aligning national standards with existing European rules – the European Commission adopted a Fertiliser Action Plan designed to facilitate farmers’ access to key agricultural inputs. Like previous geopolitical shocks, the war in Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery for global trade, have revealed Europe’s dependence on imported fertilisers.  

These local, national, European, and global developments point to a structural vulnerability at the heart of Europe’s food system, with fertilisers lying at the intersection of ecological constraints, public health, market volatility, and external dependence.  

Vulnerable supply chains 

On 19 May, more than 200 farmers protested in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, carrying a large red banner declaring a “fertiliser crisis”. Just a few weeks earlier, in April, the prices of many raw materials and fertilisers had surged. Urea, the world’s most widely used nitrogen fertiliser, had climbed above 850 dollars per tonne, the highest level since 2022.  An estimated 30 per cent of globally traded volumes of urea passed through Hormuz before the war.  

Since the 1950s, synthetic nutrients have dramatically increased agricultural productivity while reshaping Europe’s food system.

The effect of the blockade was compounded by the growing importance of Gulf states in the global fertiliser market. The world’s largest urea production complex, for instance, is located south of Doha, in Qatar. In the last 10 years, Saudi Arabia has also rapidly climbed the ranks among leading producers of phosphate-based fertilisers. The broader Gulf energy industrial complex, which underpins global fertiliser production, was put under pressure following Iran’s strikes on key energy infrastructure in the region. Qatar, for instance, suspended production of urea, ammonia, and sulfur after key facilities were damaged. 

Ammonia and sulphur, two key feedstocks used in fertiliser production, are intertwined with the fossil fuels extracted in the region. Ammonia, the key feedstock for the production of urea and all other nitrogen-based fertilisers, is obtained by combining nitrogen with hydrogen, the latter typically extracted from natural gas. Although efforts are underway to produce ammonia using “green hydrogen” produced from renewables, these technologies remain marginal.  

Similarly, sulphur is largely recovered as a by-product of oil and natural gas processing. Most of it is converted into sulfuric acid, essential for producing phosphate fertilisers, whose supply chains have also been disrupted by the war: Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are major sulphur exporters. Iran, which exported sulphur to China, Latin America, Pakistan, India, and other Asian and African countries, halted production of both sulphur and ammonia during the conflict. In light of the crisis, countries such as China – the world’s largest producer of sulfuric acid – Turkey, and India considered export restrictions. 

An old dependency 

Europe’s dependence on imported fertilisers and their feedstocks has deep historical roots. Fertiliser use began as an innovative solution to increase agricultural productivity in the early 20th century, gradually reshaping the continent’s food system, and tying farming to industrial production and global supply chains. At the heart of this shift lies the industrial processing of three essential nutrients found naturally in the environment: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. “It’s like a big kitchen,” a laboratory operator at Norwegian fertiliser giant Yara International, told me. “These elements are mixed together according to farmers’ needs, increasingly in tailor-made combinations.” 

One of the earliest artificial fertilisers, superphosphate (SSP), was first produced commercially in the mid-19th century by treating phosphate rock, rich in phosphorus, with sulphuric acid. With SSP, fertiliser manufacturing gradually moved from farms – where the natural manure cycle was rooted in the recycling of organic waste back into agricultural soils – into the hands of the agrochemical industry, accompanying the industrialisation of agriculture in the early 20th century.  

The expansion of phosphate use further tied agrochemistry to mining: phosphate rock is only found in a handful of countries, particularly in North Africa. Morocco alone holds more than 70 per cent of global phosphate reserves; it is the world’s largest producer and the second-largest exporter after China. With some reserves facing depletion in the coming decades, Beijing has implemented export controls on phosphate fertilisers since 2021. In 2017, the European Commission added phosphate to its list of critical raw materials, acknowledging its strategic importance and Europe’s exposure to supply risk.  

Since the 1950s, synthetic nutrients have dramatically increased agricultural productivity while reshaping Europe’s food system. Globally, fertiliser use rose from roughly 30 million tonnes in 1960 to more than 190 million tonnes today – a more than sixfold increase. According to estimates by Fertilizers Europe, the industry’s main trade association in the EU, of the roughly 180 million hectares of agricultural land in the European Union, nearly 124 million are now fertilised. The remaining areas consist mainly of permanent grasslands, fallow land, or land left temporarily out of production. 

Arable land dedicated to annual crops accounts for 57 per cent of fertilised land. Yet this broad picture masks significant regional differences. In Western Europe, a substantial share of agricultural land is devoted to permanent crops (such as vineyards, orchards, and forestry plantations) as well as fertilised grasslands. In Central and Eastern Europe, by contrast, agriculture is more heavily concentrated on large-scale annual cropping systems, particularly cereals, oilseeds such as rapeseed and sunflower, and fodder crops used for animal feed. As a result, Fertilizers Europe expects most Central and Eastern European EU member states to record higher fertiliser consumption in the coming years. 

The EU as a whole remains a key player in the global fertiliser market, with France, Poland, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Romania accounting for the bulk of phosphate fertiliser consumption. France is also the continent’s largest consumer of nitrogen fertilisers.  

However, overall consumption is contracting. In 2023, European agriculture applied 9.3 million tonnes of mineral fertilisers, marking a 3.7 per cent decrease compared to 2022 and a decline of more than 20 per cent from the 2017 peak. While producer associations point to signs of stabilisation and hope for a return to pre-2022 levels, the market still appears not to have fully recovered from the disruptions triggered by the war in Ukraine.  

But amid recurring geopolitical shocks and ecosystems reaching critical conditions, to what extent is a return to business as usual in fertiliser use necessary or desirable? 

Nutrition and pollution 

Intensive fertilisation has enabled Europe to expand agricultural production and secure millions of tonnes of food, but it has also created a dependence that goes beyond the actual agronomic needs of soils.  

Decades of continuous application have, in some cases, led to nutrient accumulation or imbalances. Numerous studies, some of them published by fertiliser producer associations themselves, suggest that fertiliser needs in many European and American production systems are increasingly oriented toward maintenance applications (keeping existing soil nutrient levels stable) rather than corrective inputs (raising deficient nutrient levels to a healthy target). Meanwhile, regions facing nutrient deficiencies, such as many African countries, still struggle to access fertilisers. 

Intensive nutrient use in the Global North has intensified concerns over soil health, water quality, and the accumulation of contaminants in agricultural land, all of which have entered public and policy debates. In recent years, discussions on fertiliser use in the EU have increasingly centred on pollution linked to eutrophication, a process in which excess nutrients in water bodies trigger algal blooms that deplete oxygen and disrupt aquatic ecosystems. The problem remains unresolved and continues to affect lakes and river deltas across Europe, despite the EU Nitrates Directive, which aims to reduce agricultural nitrate pollution. 

In Italy’s Po Delta, pollutants accumulated along the river system cause algal blooms, particularly in the summer. In Spain, civil society organisations have taken agro-industrial actors to court for eutrophication in the Mar Menor, accusing them of illegal discharges that contribute to the lagoon’s degradation. France’s recent cadmium controversy has expanded the debate on fertiliser sustainability beyond production sites to food safety and public health concerns.  

EU contradictions 

Despite the reassuring slogans of fertiliser producers, often framed in humanitarian terms – “saving lives” and “feeding the planet,” – the environmental costs of the agrochemical industry have long fuelled public debate and grassroots mobilisation. In autumn 2025, for instance, Tunisia saw large demonstrations against the Groupe Chimique Tunisien along the coastline of Gabès, following the hospitalisation of more than 200 people, mostly children, for respiratory distress and gas poisoning. 

In Europe, this tension between productivity and environmental limits gradually entered policy frameworks. In the early 2000s, the European agricultural policy framework finally acknowledged the urgency of limiting fertiliser dispersion by introducing environmental measures and, more recently, eco-schemes under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). These measures encourage farmers to return to more traditional agroecological practices, such as crop rotation with legumes and other plants capable of naturally enriching the soil. Agroecology Europe, a Brussels-based organisation, also recommends a partial return to non-chemical soil fertilisation methods.  

Geopolitical instability has added another layer of urgency to Europe’s need to reduce its dependency on mineral fertilisers. The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, stressed in May that the EU’s Fertiliser Action Plan isn’t just about supporting farmers in the short term but also aimed at “accelerating innovation in sustainable, home-grown solutions”. She also acknowledged that “climate leadership and economic resilience are interlinked”. 

However, the EU is rolling back climate and environmental measures to placate farmers and pursue economic competitiveness. In early 2026, under pressure from the agrochemical sector, the European Commission proposed an amendment to its Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), allowing for the temporary exclusion of certain products – particularly fertilisers – in the event of “serious harm to the EU internal market.” Meanwhile, the signing of the EU-Mercosur trade agreement with South American countries in January 2026 angered the agricultural sector, particularly in France, with farmers fearing unfair competition from imported products.  

These conflicting interests show that reversing a century-long trajectory of agricultural intensification and supply fragmentation won’t be easy, particularly in the current political climate. In this context, the EU appears to be advancing the liberalisation of agricultural policy under the banner of “sovereignty”. However, the declining productivity of soils and mounting ecological pressures both point to the need to transform this trajectory. 

Bucharest is home to one of the largest protected urban natural areas in Europe: Văcăresti Natural Park, spanning more than 186 hectares. Interestingly, the wetland, hosting hundreds of unique species of flora and fauna, is more the result of accident rather than design. Romanian civil society has played a crucial role in preserving Văcăresti, and efforts are now underway to develop a network of rewilded urban green spaces in and around Bucharest.  

Romania’s capital offers its inhabitants a dire lack of green space – less than 10 square metres per capita, far below the 26 square metres required by the EU or the 50 recommended by the WHO. By comparison, Ljubljana, often cited as Europe’s greenest capital, provides over 540 square metres of green space per inhabitant.  

Yet Bucharest is home to one of the most remarkable urban natural ecosystems in Europe. The Văcăresti delta started out as a half-built, man-made reservoir during Romania’s communist era, but it was abandoned after the change of regime in 1989 and left in prolonged administrative limbo. Over the next few decades, wildlife reconquered the park without human intervention.  

The feral, accidental type of nature that thrived on the site is deeply tied to how Bucharest evolved as a city: Like many post-communist capitals, it has seen three and a half decades of rapid and chaotic land development. The transition to market-based land ownership outpaced coherent urban planning, leading to profit-driven growth in which land was treated primarily as a commodity. While this scenario is not unique to Bucharest, its effects here are particularly acute, resulting both in severe ecological deficits and unexpected potential.  

A success story 

Romanian authorities delayed completing or repurposing the Văcăresti reservoir for more than two decades, which allowed the ecosystem to develop spontaneously. When biologists began documenting the area’s flora and fauna in 2011, the park had earned a bad reputation shaped by years of neglect, frequent garbage dumping, and rumours about its supposed danger.  

Paulina Anastasiu, director of the Botanical Gardens of Bucharest, recalls that even researchers were initially hesitant to enter the area: “I didn’t even dare to visit the place because there were urban legends saying that the place is full of feral dog packs, that a military unit from the area was using the ground for exercises. With my team made up entirely of women, we didn’t dare go there. But one day we decided to go, and, to my surprise, we didn’t encounter any danger, so we started returning regularly to study the flora.” What Anastasiu’s team found was a highly biodiverse ecosystem, including two plant species listed as endangered in Romania.  

Spanning more than 186 hectares, Bucharest’s Văcărești Delta is the largest wild ecosystem located at the heart of a European capital and the most biodiverse place in the city. It is home to more than 330 plant species, 135 insect species, 175 bird species, 7 fish species, 6 amphibian species, 5 reptile species and 13 mammal species. [Alexandra Radu/Green European Journal]

With more than 330 plant and 94 bird species initially identified in the area, Văcăresti became an active battleground between economic and environmental interests. “We worked to convince the authorities that it’s important to have a place like this in a big city,” recalls Cristian Neagoe, communications and community manager at Bucharest Natural Park, an NGO focused on rewilding the metropolitan area. “They kept saying that development is the number one priority in Bucharest. There were, of course, various real estate projects targeting that area.” 

For the NGO, a major priority was reconnecting people living in the vicinity with the place itself, remedying decades of disconnect following the demolition of the neighbourhood located in the Văcăresti area during the communist era to make space for the reservoir. Academics and civil society groups worked together for several years to document species, conduct an environmental assessment, lead volunteer garbage clean-up campaigns, create visitor infrastructure, and advocate for protection. Their efforts proved successful in both directions: the communities near the delta reclaimed it as part of their neighbourhood, the authorities recognised the value the area was bringing to the city, and, in 2016, Văcărești officially became an urban natural park. The site’s ecological value has continued to unfold over time, with ongoing monitoring documenting 180 bird species – more than a third of Romania’s total. Over time, Văcărești has become a leisure, research, and environmental education hotspot.  

“Annually, between 50,000 and 75,000 children visit the park,” said Mircea Calnegru, director of the park’s administration, at a recent event that celebrated a decade of protection for Văcărești. At the same time, he called for further development of the park’s infrastructure to enhance climate resilience and meet educational and research needs around its ecosystems.  

In Bucharest, places like Văcărești are increasingly understood through the lens of what academic literature describes as informal urban wild spaces, socio-ecological entities “with a history of strong anthropogenic disturbance that is covered at least partly with non-remnant, spontaneous vegetation”. Recognising the potential of these pockets of green space as key elements in rethinking urban nature and people-nature relationships in sustainable ways has led conservationists to adopt rewilding strategies. This approach aims to minimise and curate the impact of the anthropic factor in support of restoring natural processes and species, thus enabling landscapes to recover their ecological integrity and resilience. This strategy also increasingly aligns with European environmental policy priorities on biodiversity, climate adaptation, and sustainable urban development. 

The feral, accidental type of nature that thrived on the site is deeply tied to how Bucharest evolved as a city: Like many post-communist capitals, it has seen three and a half decades of rapid and chaotic land development.

The Bucharest Natural Park team draws inspiration for its projects from Berlin, another European city shaped by decades of division. The German capital is also the birthplace of the Bauhaus movement, whose ideas underpin the New European Bauhaus, one of the EU’s policy and funding initiatives for green, sustainable development in built environments. During a field visit to Berlin, researchers from the Romanian NGO observed how strong law enforcement, adequate funding, and cooperation between authorities and civil society can transform urban ecology. At the same time, the comparison highlighted Bucharest’s remarkable biodiversity: “We were surprised by the lack of insects, and therefore of birds. There is little biodiversity in Berlin, which shows it’s very difficult to rewild areas that have been heavily industrialised – like railway infrastructure. Even if these areas are currently protected, they don’t have the biodiversity we still see in Bucharest,” Neagoe explained. This insight reinforced two priorities: stronger institutional commitment to enforcement and funding, and broader public education about the ecological value of Bucharest’s feral nature.  

Scaling up rewilding  

Transversal cooperation has played an important role in protecting the Văcărești Nature Park, but the fight to protect Romania’s ecosystems is far from over. “The most difficult thing after having a success story is to see how to grow, how to scale it so that it becomes a network of stories, at the city level,” said environment minister Diana Buzoianu at an event in May 2026 marking the 10th anniversary of Văcărești gaining protected status. To further support the park’s ecosystem, its administrators, along with city authorities and civil society, are implementing a transnational project that will integrate rainwater collected from neighbouring areas in the wetland water system. This effort aims to enhance both the ecosystem’s resistance to drought and the neighbourhood’s resilience to flooding. Through the same project, the park will be connected with other green-blue areas of Bucharest.  

Building on the Văcărești experience, the team at Bucharest Natural Park identified five more neglected areas – Băneasa forest, Petricani Meadow, Dâmbovița Floodplain, Saulei Valley, and the Dobroești Reedbeds – totalling more than 1300 hectares. In 2024, the NGO launched the Bucharest Rewilding programme to develop a network of rewilded urban green spaces, with the aim of improving the wellbeing of the human and non-human inhabitants of the city and its climate resilience. 

On 30 July 2025, Petricani Meadow became the first of these sites to gain protected status. Despite its modest size of just 5.6 hectares, the area hosts hundreds of plant, insect, fish, bird, and mammal species, including 44 protected ones. The nature park is accessible to the general public even as conservation and monitoring efforts are underway alongside volunteer-based environmental education. Dan Bărbulescu, director of the Bucharest Natural Park NGO, says this approach is needed for the project’s continued success: “Conservation and monitoring of natural spaces should go hand in hand with public visitation, for awareness raising, so people can understand why these areas should be preserved and what their contribution to a better quality of life is.”  

240 volunteers of all ages participated in a planting event organised by ChildrenÕs Forest Association, on an empty plot in Tineretului Park in central Bucharest. [Alexandra Radu/Green European Journal] Lasting threats 

Yet challenges remain. In Bucharest, the value of green spaces is still largely assessed in terms of their leisure function and surface area. Bărbulescu warns that this approach overlooks their role in climate adaptation, biodiversity support, and long-term urban resilience. 

The Băneasa Forest illustrates these tensions. Covering roughly 1,100 hectares on Bucharest’s northern edge, it has been one of the city’s most accessible escapes into wild nature for generations of Bucharest residents. More than a century of logging, habitat fragmentation, and encroaching transport infrastructure and real estate development led to drastic ecosystem degradation. 

A tiny remnant of ancient forests that spread centuries ago from the Subcarpathian Hills all the way to the Danube and once a thriving ecosystem, Băneasa has seen a massive loss in biodiversity. Dan Turiga, a forester and activist with Agent Green, a Romanian environmental conservation NGO, describes it as a forest that has lost its apex predators: “This is a forest in which red deer used to live. They need a large circulation area and a quiet habitat. We still have roe deer, they are smaller and more adaptive, but they also became inbred because of the isolation of the forest from other bodies of forest.”  

Recounting memories of his grandmother, who used to hear wolves howling near the village she grew up in, located at the edge of a forest not far from Băneasa, Turiga adds: “These forests, Băneasa included, used to be a habitat for wolves, badgers.”

The forest’s presence in Bucharest’s collective memory has helped sustain public attachment, but in the absence of coherent policy, efforts to safeguard Băneasa have largely translated into repeated cycles of civic pressure rather than stable protection. One such wave of pressure led to a partial victory in 2020, when the forest was reclassified by the Romanian Forestry Authority as a park forest, essentially stopping industrial lumber exploitation and only allowing less invasive silvicultural treatments, like dead wood removal. “I think it’s a small step forward. Not sufficient, though, because the forest is still exploited for wood, at the edge of legality,” explained Turiga. He also believes that a long-term ecological vision for the preservation of Băneasa is absent, which poses a constant threat to the forest’s ecosystem.  

Bucharest demonstrates both the risks of fragmented governance and the latent potential embedded in spontaneous ecosystems.

Last year, the fragility of this protection became evident with the reemergence of an old conflict: a forest road illegally built and later opened by the local forestry authority for public car traffic. The road was officially justified as infrastructure serving forest exploitation, but in practice it provided a shortcut for residents of a nearby residential compound that cut directly through the forest. Over the years, pressure from real estate developers on local authorities had proved strong enough to keep the road open for months in a row several times, until public pressure and law enforcement managed to get it closed. The latest toll contract that opened the forest road to vehicles started in September 2025.  

According to Turiga, the ecological impact of opening the road for vehicles was immediate and severe. Daily car traffic disrupted animal movement, trapped emissions within the forest canopy, and generated high levels of dust from the gravel surface, affecting both wildlife and people using the forest for recreation. More fundamentally, he argues, the road should not exist at all as it was partially built after industrial logging stopped, and thus its legal justification has been flawed from the beginning.  

The debate around the road has also revealed deeper governance failures. “When it comes to managing the Băneasa Forest, it’s essential that managers, forestry personnel in general, regain a high degree of professional conscientiousness and ethics, which lately has been questionable,” argued Turiga, referencing the caving in of forestry authorities to the pressures of real estate developers.  

An analysis from the Ministry of Environment’s Control Body, released in February, concluded that the section of the road built after 2020 – and the toll contract enabling public access – were illegal. The report concluded that the road should be returned to its original state. Subsequently, the Romanian Forestry Authority banned vehicle access to the road in April.  

Yet even as these governance failures persist, the process of formal protection has begun to take shape, under continued public pressure. In September 2025, environment minister Diana Buzoianu announced plans to designate Băneasa Forest as a protected area, framing it as a vital green asset of the capital. Civil society once again proved an important actor in this process. Since the beginning of 2025, biologists from the Bucharest Natural Park Association have conducted a scientific study that could serve as a basis for efforts to grant the forest protected status. Biologists identified 207 animal species living in the forest, out of which 45 are protected, as well as 80 plant species. The study, officially filed for evaluation with the Romanian Academy in March 2026, signalled a transition from advocacy to institutional procedure, but the outcome remains uncertain.  

Environment minister Diana Buzoianu walks with local authorities, NGO representatives, scientists and community members in Băneasa Forest during an event marking the submission of a scientific study regarding the ecosystem of the forest to the Romanian Academy on International Forest Day. [Alexandra Radu/Green European Journal]

According to Buzoianu, the project is part of a broader policy initiative aiming to extend stronger protection regimes to peri-urban forests across Romania. “This project will show that we can have a common mission – civil society, the ministry, local mayors – all these actors must work together,” the minister stated. Yet, as the unresolved road dispute illustrates, the translation of such commitments into enforcement remains uncertain. 

Why rewilding matters 

Băneasa Forest is part of a broader ecological system that enhances Bucharest’s capacity to cope with climate stress. When announcing plans for its protection, Buzoianu warned that “If we don’t protect the Băneasa Forest, Bucharest will become a microwave oven.” The metaphor may be blunt, but it captures measurable reality: in a city increasingly exposed to heatwaves, large forested areas function as temperature and humidity regulators.  

Together with Văcăresti delta, Petricani Meadow and other wild ecosystems, Băneasa forms a fragmented but functional network of green-blue spaces with systemic effects. Various connected green spaces allow species to circulate through the hostile urban environment, expanding biodiversity beyond the limits of any single site. In this sense, rewilded areas extend far beyond their recreational value, operating instead as distributed environmental infrastructure.  

Above all, these areas serve as protection for those who are most vulnerable to environmental stress. They matter most for the elderly and children during heatwaves, people with chronic illnesses, and those living in poor housing conditions. Moreover, the mental health benefits of easy access to wild ecosystems carry particular weight for those who lack economic or logistical possibilities of accessing wilderness outside the city: low-income families, people with disabilities, caregivers or new parents navigating restricted mobility. Rewilded areas offer psychological relief without the commercial component often associated with traditional parks or natural spaces located far from the city.  

While large ecosystems such as Băneasa or Văcărești operate at a metropolitan scale, rewilding in Bucharest is also unfolding in smaller, more distributed forms. Children’s Forest Association, an environmental NGO focused on urban reforestation across southern Romania, is developing microreforestation projects across overlooked urban plots, transforming them into dense, biodiverse patches that concentrate ecological functions within limited space. “I see two main benefits,” explains Teodora Pălărie, president of the association. “On one hand, microclimatic regulation, and on the other, biodiversity. These are pockets of biodiversity – we even call them pocket forests. Think of a pocket dictionary that you carry with you: small enough to fit in your hand, but holding an entire language inside.”  

By planting between 25 and 30 native species typical of southern Romania, these sites compress ecological diversity into highly visible, educational environments. This density not only strengthens ecological resilience but also shapes perception: “When you see so many different species per square metre, you become curious – you start noticing differences between a linden, a birch or a poplar tree; you want to find out more about that little forest surrounding you,” she noted. 

These micro-forests function as tangible climate infrastructure. Pălărie added that research and field observations suggest that once such a patch extends over roughly three hectares, it can influence the surrounding neighbourhood, lowering summer temperatures by 2 to 5 degrees Celsius while moderating winter extremes. Just as importantly, they reduce the amplitude between day and night temperatures, a factor linked to soil degradation and desertification. “I often tell people who take part in our planting events to imagine the forest like the hair on a camel,” Pălărie explained. “It protects against strong solar radiation and reduces day-night temperature differences, helping soil maintain structure.” Even at smaller scales, these interventions act as local refuges: shading streets, buffering wind, increasing air humidity through evapotranspiration, and creating pockets of cooler air that can be directly experienced during heatwaves.  

In Bucharest, there is a strong and growing public demand for direct engagement with such spaces. Approximately 240 volunteers participated in a recent planting event, out of which 140 were children. As a scout leader said while coordinating his team, “Planting events don’t happen that often, maybe two or three times each spring. They’re rare, and there’s huge demand. All the centres in Bucharest want to come, so as soon as we hear about one, everyone rushes to sign up.” The enthusiasm reflects the perceived value of such hands-on environmental experiences as educational and community-building tools.  

The vision of the “Cool Bucharest” project, which is currently being developed by Children’s Forest Association, is to locate many of these micro-forests in accessible spaces – museum gardens, social service centres, and courtyards – where entry would be free and unrestricted. If funding is secured, these sites could function as everyday climate shelters. “Once you bring nature into the city, through Miyawaki miniature forests for example, or through rain gardens or urban meadows, you create a network,” Pălărie argues. “The power of that network is much more achievable than the possibility of having a single 50-hectare park in Bucharest. Nobody will offer such a large space.”  

Together, large protected ecosystems and micro-forests distributed in between begin to outline a different model of urban green infrastructure: one that is layered, connected, and designed around ecological function rather than surface appearance.  

From an administrative point of view, rewilding can also be economically beneficial. “Using native plant species is financially efficient – they are adapted to our local climate and, if they are also perennial, it means we don’t have to make yearly financial efforts to keep some areas green,” explained Anastasiu of the Romanian botanical garden.

Bucharest’s shades of green  

Ecologists argue not for replacing classical parks, but for diversifying the urban green-blue infrastructure. Both designed parks and wild urban areas offer access to nature and climate resilience, but they do so in various proportions and through different means. Structured parks tend to prioritise accessibility, aesthetics, and spaces for outdoor play and sports, while rewilded areas allow ecological processes to unfold more freely, strengthening biodiversity and climate adaptation capacity. “Well-managed parks alternating with wild spaces is the way to greatly increase the green-blue areas in Bucharest. That’s what we are working for in the Colentina Lakes area, by maintaining Saulei Valley and Dobroesti Reeds as wild areas to alternate with the classical park restoration that is projected to take place there,” explains Bărbulescu of Bucharest Natural Park Association, referencing other areas targeted for protection by the Rewilding Bucharest program. 

From the accidental emergence of Văcărești Natural Park to the contested protection of Băneasa Forest, Bucharest demonstrates both the risks of fragmented governance and the latent potential embedded in spontaneous ecosystems. Hosting almost 10 per cent of Romania’s population, the city would greatly benefit from integrating rewilding into urban master plans, climate adaptation strategies, and budgetary frameworks. Shifting responsibility from civic activists to public authorities and ensuring protection and legal enforcement for rewilded areas are key steps to take in that direction.   

The broader European context reflects the need for this shift. Nearly three-quarters of EU citizens currently live in urban areas, a figure projected to rise to almost 80 per cent by 2050. This demographic makes urban resilience one of the defining political and ecological questions of the coming decades. Bucharest’s trajectory suggests that sustainable cities will not be those that control nature most tightly, but those that learn to embed ecological complexity into urban planning.  

Solar geoengineering is no silver bullet against the climate crisis, but rejecting it categorically in the name of preserving the planet overlooks our entanglement with the atmosphere. Drawing on feminist neo-materialism, Anni Pokela proposes a different approach: purposeful, accountable participation in atmospheric becoming from within the relationship.

“It surrounds us, penetrates us, and we are barely aware of it.” As philosopher Emanuele Coccia writes in The Life of Plants (2018), the atmosphere is our first world – “the sphere of breath, the medium in which everything that lives is wholly immersed.” And it is changing at an accelerating pace.

The latest assessment by climate scientist James Hansen and colleagues shows that the pace of global warming has accelerated from 0.18 to 0.27 degrees Celsius per decade – over 50 per cent faster than the average between 1970 and 2010. The researchers estimate that we will cross the 2-degree threshold by 2045.

In this context, it makes sense that a growing number of actors have begun considering emergency measures such as solar radiation geoengineering: the idea of deliberately injecting reflective particles into the stratosphere to cool the planet by deflecting some of the Sun’s radiation back into space.

For many environmentalists and ecofeminists, the very concept is an affront: a masculinist, technocratic fantasy that treats the Earth as a machine to be tuned rather than a living system to be respected. The instinct is often to reject it categorically.

I understand that instinct, because I have felt it myself. But I have come to believe that categorical rejection is neither the most responsible nor the most fruitful position available to us.

The debate as it stands

Solar radiation modification (SRM), most commonly discussed in the form of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), has been modelled and theorised for over 50 years. The idea is inspired by what volcanoes do naturally: when Mount Tambora, on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia, erupted in 1815, the massive cloud of particles it released cooled the global climate by roughly one degree Celsius for years. SAI would attempt something similar by design – aircraft or high-altitude balloons releasing reflective particles into the stratosphere to create a partial sunshade – only with less sulfur, or even potentially a less toxic, more bio-based particle.

SRM does not remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and it does not address the root cause of climate change. It is, at best, a temporary response that could buy time while the deeper, structural work of decarbonisation continues. Yet, the attention it receives is growing, driven by an uncomfortable reality: we are running out of that very time.

In ecofeminist circles, geoengineering has been met with powerful and, in many ways, justified resistance.

Despite this growing interest, there is currently no international framework governing SRM research or deployment. No large-scale field experiments are underway, and the research remains dominated by climate modelling in Global North institutions. Additionally, private actors such as the startup Stardust Solutions are taking the lead, raising questions about public oversight and accountability. And this is precisely the problem: the conversation about whether and how to investigate these technologies is happening without most of the world at the table. As the UN Environment Programme’s Expert Panel has stressed, there needs to be significantly more research into the potential impacts of SRM on communities already on the frontlines of climate change.

The feminist refusal

Within environmental thought, and particularly in ecofeminist circles, geoengineering has been met with powerful and, in many ways, justified resistance. Although SRM would be, at best, a complementary solution to decarbonisation, environmentalists have raised significant concerns about it being used as an argument to delay the more systemic transition away from fossil fuels and overconsumption.

Meanwhile, feminist scholars have exposed the masculinist, techno-scientific culture that permeates the field: the dominance of male-led research teams from the Global North, the privileging of quantitative methods over qualitative or community-based knowledge, and the deployment of fatalistic narratives that frame SRM as an inevitable necessity or a “neutral” silver bullet.

The Hands Off Mother Earth Alliance, a coalition of civil society groups and feminist advocates, has articulated perhaps the most forceful collective opposition to geoengineering, calling it a perpetuation of the unjust industrial model that caused the climate crisis in the first place. Ecofeminist voices often invoke the Mother Earth metaphor to insist on the planet’s intrinsic worth and resist its instrumentalisation. These critiques rightly expose that geoengineering is not a neutral technical question but is fundamentally about values, power, and whose knowledge counts.

Yet, these critiques have three recurring limitations.

First, they tend to conflate the problematic ideologies behind geoengineering discourse with the technological mechanics themselves. The fact that current research culture is steeped in masculinist assumptions does not mean that the physics of SAI’s aerosol-radiation interactions are inherently patriarchal. The essentialist language that portrays SRM mechanics themselves as a hubristic, sometimes even phallistic, penetration into the natural system misses this important distinction. If the background assumptions were different – if the researchers, the questions, the governance, the values were different – would the critique remain the same?

Second, some critiques contain an inconsistency. They call for recognising our deep interconnection with the natural world while simultaneously treating atmospheric technology as something categorically external to it – as if restoring a local wetland were a relational act but reflecting sunlight were an alien violation. Some of the imagery used in anti-geoengineering advocacy conveys the idea that these technologies are comparable to a planet-sized wrench threatening to tinker with nature. This implicitly reinstates the nature-culture binary that feminist theory has spent decades trying to dismantle. If we truly are interconnectedly one with Mother Earth, how can we sustainably position technology as an inherent outsider to this configuration?

Third, there is a problem of scale. Feminist environmental thought has long prioritised local, situated, community-based knowledge and action – and rightly so. But when it comes to planetary atmospheric physics, localism alone cannot resolve the challenge. The atmosphere does not respect these boundaries. A farmer’s methane emissions in Finland and a monsoon system in South Asia are entangled in the same global climate. The exclusive emphasis on small-scale solutions, while morally appealing, risks proving inadequate at the planetary scale, where some of the most urgent decisions must be made.

A different way in

This is where feminist new materialism opens a different door – not to uncritical endorsement of geoengineering, but to a more honest and fruitful engagement with it.

The work of physicist and philosopher Karen River Barad, whose theory of agential realism is foundational to new materialist thought, offers tools for rethinking the relationship between humans, technology, and the atmosphere. Barad’s central concept is intra-action: the idea that distinct entities do not exist prior to their relations but emerge through them. Where conventional thinking assumes that separate entities – a particle, an atmosphere, and a research team, for example – come together and interact, Barad argues that they only come into being through their entanglement.

The question is not whether we participate in shaping the atmosphere but how.

Applied to SAI, this reframing is profound. The atmosphere is not a passive container waiting to receive aerosol particles or not, nor are those particles inert tools wielded by human controllers. What SAI would constitute, from a Baradian perspective, is a phenomenon – an ongoing material-discursive entanglement in which human decision-making, particle chemistry, stratospheric wind patterns, solar radiation, and surface ecosystems all participate agentially. The cooling effect does not simply happen to the atmosphere; it emerges through the specific configuration of all these entangled agencies.

This reframing does two critical things. First, it dissolves the comfortable binary between a “natural” atmosphere and an “engineered” one. Second, it dismantles the hubristic mindset that we could ever have complete control over the atmosphere. Both stances – protecting a pure system and seizing control of it – are revealed to be ontologically unsustainable.

Industrial emissions, shipping pollution and agricultural practices, to name a few, have been modifying the atmosphere for centuries. Climate scientist James Hansen himself has noted that the reduction of sulphur in shipping fuel – a clean air policy – inadvertently removed a cooling effect equivalent to what SAI proposes to create. In a real, material sense, we are not standing outside the atmosphere wondering whether to intervene. We are already geoengineering the planet. The question, therefore, is not whether we participate in shaping the atmosphere but how.

From intervention to intra-vention

Based on these considerations, I propose to replace the concept of “climate intervention”, which is conventionally used to describe geoengineering techniques, with the idea of climate intra-vention. Where intervention signals a procedure performed from the outside (an actor imposing change on a passive system) intra-vention designates something different: purposeful, accountable participation in atmospheric becoming from within the relationship.

This is not a semantic trick. The shift in framing would carry real consequences for how research is designed and governed. If SAI is understood as intra-action rather than intervention, then the models, metrics, and governance structures used in research are not neutral instruments of observation, but actively shape what the atmosphere becomes and what counts as relevant knowledge about it. Current SAI modelling, for instance, tends to prioritise global mean temperature as its primary metric. This makes temperature change visible and determinate while rendering other effects – regional precipitation shifts, monsoon stability, agricultural impacts – less prominent.

Different research practices would literally produce different phenomena. A modelling apparatus that centred, say, monsoon system stability or the lived experiences of communities in the Sahel, would not simply see SAI differently; it would literally bring a different version of SAI into being, with different boundaries, different risks, and different possibilities. This is what Barad means when they say that apparatuses are not static setups but are perpetually open to rearrangement. A patriarchal, technocratic configuration of SAI research is not the only possible one.

This is where feminist engagement with geoengineering becomes not just possible but urgently necessary. If how we set up SAI research actively produces what SAI is, then the values, perspectives, and power relations embedded in that setup matter enormously. Feminist principles of justice, care, transparency, and participatory knowledge production are not peripheral add-ons to the “real science”. They are constitutive of the science itself.

Care, not control

As climate impacts accelerate, interest in SRM technologies will only grow – whether feminists are at the table or not. If the field is abandoned to technocratic elites and private actors, the very outcomes that feminist critics most fear become more likely: unilateral deployment driven by profit, governance captured by powerful states, communities – particularly in the Global South – excluded from decisions that will reshape their climate.

The concerned scientists who launched the Solar Geoengineering Non-Use Agreement in 2022 called for immediate political action to prevent the “normalisation” of solar geoengineering as a climate policy option, arguing that it is neither necessary, desirable, nor governable in the current context. But as others have pointed out, if publicly funded, transparent research is banned, the field does not disappear. It simply moves into clandestine, unmonitored, private hands.

Feminist engagement with SAI can be understood as an act of care rather than an endorsement of control. Care, in the sense that feminist philosopher María Puig de la Bellacasa articulates it, is not about fixing or mastering but about attending to neglected realities, staying with troubling situations, and taking responsibility for the entanglements we are already part of. This means approaching SRM deliberation as a form of responsibility toward the communities already experiencing unbearable heat, failing harvests, and collapsing ecosystems; insisting that research is designed with justice at its centre, and that Indigenous communities, researchers in the Global South, and grassroots actors are not consulted after the fact but participate in shaping what research is prioritised, what SRM is understood to be and how that research looks like in practice.

Staying with the trouble

This framework does not solve all tensions. Most SRM research is still funded and governed by powerful institutions in the Global North, and profit motives, geopolitical competition, and blind techno-optimism are real forces in this space. There is a risk that the language of “intra-vention” and “care” could be co-opted to entrench business as usual.

Categorical rejection is not abstention. It is an act that excludes certain possibilities while enabling others.

There is also a temporal dilemma. Climate urgency is used to justify accelerating SRM research now, within existing structures, before the systemic transformation that justice demands has been achieved. But if we rush ahead, we risk consolidating the very systems that caused the crisis. On the other hand, if we wait for post-growth institutions and decolonial governance to emerge fully before investigating SRM, we may face tipping points that foreclose the possibility of such transformations.

There is no neat resolution to these contradictions. But holding these perspectives simultaneously is more honest and more productive than pretending they do not exist. Donna Haraway calls this “staying with the trouble”: refusing both the seductions of despair and the false comforts of easy answers.

What Barad’s philosophy adds is the insight that inaction is not a neutral zero position. In a world where the atmosphere is already being reshaped by human activity, choosing not to investigate how it might be reshaped more deliberately is itself a form of participation in atmospheric becoming, with its own consequences and its own accountabilities. Categorical rejection is not abstention. It is an act that excludes certain possibilities while enabling others – and we are responsible for those exclusions.

Historically, feminist thought has been at its most powerful when it has refused purity. When it has held contradictions, and when it has insisted on staying engaged with messy, compromised realities rather than retreating to the moral high ground. The atmosphere – this all-encompassing fluid that we breathe, that we are reshaping, that is reshaping us – demands nothing less.