For two days in late September, foreign ambassadors, officials from Stockholm as well as Brussels, and Lund University’s own corps of experts gathered at City Hall to talk about the present and future of the European Union. The conference boasted keynote speakers Jessica Rosencrantz and Carl Bildt, Minister for EU Affairs and former prime minister and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations respectively, who set the tone for the event. The thematic throughline is a sign of the times: speakers returned again and again to the topics of security and economics.
This is the fifth consecutive year that EU Days, a forum for discussion on the EU and Sweden’s role within it, has been held in Lund. Some talks dedicated special attention to the region in which they took place, with a focus on the Öresund Bridge and upcoming Fehmarnbelt tunnel set to shorten the Copenhagen-Hamburg commute to two and a half hours. Others limited themselves only to the EU’s outer borders and what lies immediately beyond them, with discussions about prospects for new members. However, with constant references to China, Russia, and more obliquely “the other side of the Atlantic,” it is clear that the EU views itself as one of a few major powers in the world—and it increasingly looks outward to take stock of its relative position.
Conversations about the EU’s place in the world at Lund’s EU Days were anything but theoretical. Europe is “more than ever before shaping the political landscape,” said Rosencrantz, a development driven in large part by the war in Ukraine as well as “the political direction” of the United States and China’s “increasingly explicit ambition to shape a multipolar world.” With global power balances shifting fast, Europe’s diplomats, ministers, and scholars agreed on three key priorities: security, self-sufficiency, and diversification.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues to set the tone. “Supporting Ukraine is our duty as citizens of the free world,” said Rosencrantz, noting Sweden’s 95.8 billion SEK (€8.8 billion) in contributions. The war has also pushed Europe to rethink how dependent it has become on others for energy, technology, and even defense. Denmark’s ambassador Jens Kisling put it bluntly: “We have to be able to defend ourselves.”
But global partnerships still matter. “The US is our big, if not biggest, partner,” said Poland’s ambassador to Stockholm Karolina Ostrzyniewska, “but there are political choices to be made.” Several speakers voiced unease about Washington’s protectionist turn and the volatility of the second Trump presidency. “We can’t be a ping-pong ball between the US and China,” one attendee summed up.
China’s growing influence was another recurring theme. The EU’s answer? Diversify trade and invest in a “competitive green transition.” “A competitive green transition drives growth and vice versa,” said Rosencrantz, echoing the Danish call to “bring down the burden on enterprises” while keeping climate goals high.
After a few talks, it seemed that the speakers had started a book club around the so-called Draghi Report on the prospects for European competitiveness, which was referenced so often that it became an event-wide inside joke. So did an IMF report which attempted to translate internal trade barriers into tariff equivalents: over forty percent on goods, and a hundred on services.
To be more competitive in an uncertain world, the EU looked to enlargement.
But as discussions at this year’s EU Days in Lund made clear, enlargement is about more than geopolitics. It’s a test of what Europe truly stands for. Speakers circled around one question: can the EU stay true to its founding values while it grows?
“The Union is returning to its roots, peace and security,” said Sweden’s Minister for EU Affairs, Jessica Rosencrantz. For her, enlargement remains “our main tool for ensuring prosperity and stability,” but only if the Union keeps its standards high. “We are a union of values,” she added, alluding to the rule-of-law disputes with Hungary.
That tension between defending democracy at home and promoting it abroad ran through the debate. Rikard Bengtsson from Lund University described Russia’s war on Ukraine as a “catalyst” for a new enlargement logic: “We want to anchor Ukraine quickly, they want that and we need that.” Others warned that speed shouldn’t trump credibility. “If we start compromising on values for geopolitical reasons, we’re in trouble,” said Peter Lundberg from the Raoul Wallenberg Institute.
The idea of “membership lite” or “gradual integration” was floated, but panelists like Klara Lindström doubted Ukraine would ever accept a “second-class membership.” Meanwhile, frustration was brewing in the Western Balkans, still waiting after years spent as candidates.
Behind every discussion about borders, the message was clear: enlargement isn’t just about geography. As one participant put it, “The way is the market, but the soul of Europe is its values.”
Another important throughline was young people, not as a topic but as a key target demographic for the event itself. Being held so closely to, and in collaboration with, Lund University, the event has garnered the attention of its student body, and some speakers were counting on it: with few applicants and a wave of retirements incoming, Sweden suffers a long-term and worsening representation gap in Brussels. From a talk by the Swedish Council for Higher Education, to an EU career workshop, to a panel on “living and working in Brussels,” the urgency of the problem was noticeable.
“One particular highlight for me was listening to Carl Bildt share the story of EU’s formation and the importance of a unified Europe,” said Moa Gustafsson, a student in attendance at the event. And if one word could capture the mood, it was unity: Europe’s greatest strength, yet its hardest promise to keep in a world where, as another student in the audience said, “the rules are being rewritten faster than ever.”
As Katarina Engberg, senior advisor at the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies, pointed out in the concluding session, climate issues barely received a mention, having been “crowd[ed] out” by discussions of security and preparedness. “[EU] policy has almost exclusively shifted to the security priorities, particularly to Ukraine’s war as well as its accession to the EU,” Juan Camilo Franco, another student in attendance, said, echoing the sentiment. Climate challenges are implied in discussions of the ‘green transition,’ at this event almost exclusively followed or preceded by the word ‘competitiveness,’ as in: the green transition is key to making the EU competitive on the global stage, economically as well as technologically—and in 2025, that is its most important role.
Engberg nonetheless hopes that 2026 will be a return to balance in coverage between the two topics. Annika Wäppling Korzinek, Head of European Commission Representation in Sweden, hopes that Draghi will join us in person at next year’s EU Days—no longer just in spirit.
By Sabina Rameke & Dipline Purbuar
23 October, 2025
