In a recent article published by Friends of Europe, EERA Secretary General Adel El Gammal reflects on the current global political and environmental challenges, and on what role the EU should be taking in order to face them.

To introduce his argument, Mr El Gammal uses a well-known metaphor to shed light on the present state of human society. “Political turmoil and the acceleration of compounding and converging manmade challenges”, he says, “leaves little doubt that the ‘boiling frog’ metaphor might well prefigure the fate of human society”. In other words, just like a frog in tepid water, humanity is sinking into a tranquil stupor, as one of the novelists that made this metaphor famous would say, unresistingly allowing itself to be, quite literally, boiled to death.

Pessimist metaphors aside, EERA’s Secretary General sees signs of change in the systemic responses of EU economies, perhaps powerful enough to wake the frog up from its surrendering doziness.
El Gammal highlights how the recent war in Ukraine has given way to an unanticipated cohesive front at the European level. At the same time, he recognizes that the the free market has been cracked and the EU military doctrine is being revised, so much to put the idea of a European military back on the table after decades. According to Mr El Gammal, this could be an indication that the long-awaited consciousness of the EU values, both from national institutions and citizens, might finally soon become a reality.

Due to this quick yet unexpected shift in the EU’s state of being, Mr El Gammal emphasizes the urgency for an “unprecedented global science-based collaboration and convergence to allow any liveable future for humanity”. He sees this moment in time as a unique opportunity for disruptive societal innovation and strongly looks at the EU as the possible leader of this revolution, as the entity capable of creating a testbed for a new geopolitical order.

Read the full article at this link.