Funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research programme, the “Envisioning a New Governance Architecture for a Global Europe” (ENGAGE) project aims to provide policymakers with a toolbox to improve the capacities and capabilities of the EU’s external action.

With a total budget of 3M €, the project will run from 2021 to 2024 and is coordinated by Esade.

ENGAGE pursues the following five general objectives:

• To analyse the main contextual challenges that the EU’s external action is facing, both those arising from the diversification of international relations and global governance and those originating from the acceptability of EU external action from the perspective of citizens and national decision makers.
• To assess existing governance structures and policy processes, those that are foreseen in the Treaties but are yet to come to fruition (so-called “sleeping beauties”), and those that should be devised in relation to the multiple domains of the EU’s external action.
• To examine the ways in which the EU can more effectively achieve a set of key goals, including a successful engagement with strategic partners, neighbouring regions, and conflict and crisis scenarios.
• To formulate recommendations, presented via a white paper, on how to accommodate multiple action domains, including traditionally internal policy areas, in a joined-up, coherent, sustainable, and effective external action. Furthermore, ENGAGE will produce suggestions on how to coordinate EU Member States’ foreign policies on the basis of common EU positions.
• To inform policymakers on the governance structures needed to ensure joined-up and sustainable EU diplomatic action and international cooperation. ENGAGE will also reach out to other key stakeholders and elaborate on how the EU can devise and ultimately achieve certain key goals in light of the current international and domestic context, thus going beyond the H2020 call.

This project will benefit from the expertise of 13 partner universities, research centres and think thanks from more than 10 different countries:

1. Esade Business & Law School (Spain, coordinator)
2. Carnegie Europe Foundation (Belgium)
3. GLOBSEC (Slovakia)
4. Hertie School (Germany)
5. Institut de Relations Internationales et Stratégiques – IRIS (France)
6. International Institute for Strategic Studies – IISS (Germany and UK)
7. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
8. Kolegium Europejskie (Collège d’Europe, campus Natolin, Poland)
9. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (The Netherlands)
10. Sabanci University (Turkey)
11. Tampere University (Finland)
12. The University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom)
13. Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (Spain)

The ENGAGE project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 962533.