Where do Europeans feel dependence most in their daily lives?

'We Europeans are far less free than we think. Our daily lives rest on invisible dependencies: energy we don't produce, platforms we don't control, a security umbrella we never had to pay for. That comfortable unawareness is ending, and it took Trump's coercion and Putin's aggression to end it, not decades of EU institution-building. The price at the pump, what social media is doing to our children, and the realisation that we cannot defend ourselves without Washington's blessing are now kitchen-table conversations. Dependence is becoming visible. And visibility is where change begins.'

What does “breaking free” mean in practice for Europe?

'For us Europeans, breaking free is not simply about removing constraints. That's the thin, negative version of liberty the hard right has captured. True freedom is positive: it's the capacity to act, to choose, to govern ourselves. Breaking free means reclaiming agency — systematically undercutting the dependencies we've allowed to accumulate over decades in energy, defence, technology, and beyond. In practice, it means building the collective power to imagine and enact our own future - something we never did as Europeans.'

Are European leaders failing to act, or are they constrained?

'Both. The constraints are real: unanimity rules, unsynchronised electoral cycles, and divergent national interests. But leaders have long used those as cover for inaction they'd choose anyway. What's shifting is the cost. The polycrisis, from Ukraine, Trump to climate, is making inertia more expensive than acting together. And Europeans are starting to notice. When citizens begin pressuring their national leaders to think and act European rather than along parochial domestic interests, the constraints don't necessarily vanish, but the incentives may finally change. At last!'

Who should definitely attend the event, and why?

'Anyone who thinks Europe is doomed and that citizens can't do anything about it. Anyone who senses something structural is broken but lacks the framework to articulate it. And especially those generations of Europeans whose adult lives have been shaped as much by the EU as by their national capitals — who feel European not just on paper, but in how they live, work, and think — and who are ready to act on that additional identity rather than wait for their governments to catch up. Time has come for them to reclaim their agency not only at the local and national level but also within and across Europe.'

About Alberto Alemanno

Alberto Alemanno is the Jean Monnet Professor of EU Law at HEC Paris and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe. One of Europe's leading voices on the democratisation of the EU, his scholarship centres on how law and policy can shift power, countering social, economic, and political inequalities within European societies and beyond. Alemanno has authored more than fifty scientific articles and several books, including Nudge and the Law: A European Perspective and the widely translated Lobbying for Change: Find Your Voice to Create a Better Society, a theoretical and practical guide empowering ordinary citizens to engage with policymaking at every level. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the European Journal of Risk Regulation, published by Cambridge University Press.

Beyond academia, he has built durable civic infrastructure, including legal clinics, policy and advocacy labs, and pro bono services, to match his research convictions. As founder of The Good Lobby, he works to equalise access to political power for civil society. He has translated scholarship directly into policy, advising on the EU Tobacco Products Directive introducing of plain packaging across EU member states, drafting the EU Whistleblower Directive, designing the first independent EU Ethics Body, and proposing a dedicated EU Commissioner for Future Generations. His advocacy spans dozens of transnational campaigns, from the European Citizens' Initiatives One Single Tariff, Stop Glyphosate, Voters without Borders to Save Your Right, Save Your Flight, alongside strategic litigation including the pending MEDEL case and End the Cage Age v Commission aimed at improving access to EU Courts. In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, his Ukraine Corporate Index - credited by the Financial Times and Forbes - applied sustained pressure on multinationals to reassess their presence in the Russian market.