Berlin – ESI at the European Resilience Summit: We must tell Europe’s story

18 September 2025
Berlin in Winter, Photo: flickr/Ondre
Berlin in Winter, Photo: flickr/Ondre

ESI’s Gerald Knaus gave an opening speech at the European Resilience Summit in Berlin. The European Resilience Summit is a pan-European platform that brings together leaders from government, industry, technology, security, and civil society to find concrete means to increase Europe’s resilience to crisis and instability.

Gerald noted that the European project is facing a moment of great trial, facing unprecedented attacks from both the outside and from within. Externally, Vladimir Putin is working to provoke mass-migration movements towards Europe with the aim of sowing social conflict. Within, the anti-European far-right seeks to capitalize on this conflict, spreading its anti-migrant, identitarian messaging with slick media campaigns. This strategy has paid dividends, with far-right parties such as the AfD in Germany or the RN in France surging in the polls.

To meet this threat, European defenders of liberal democracy need to do a better job of telling our story. Modern Europe is a historical success – we have built a peaceful union with the world’s highest standards of living, unprecedented trans-national partnership, and firmly-anchored rule-of-law. To share this success story, Europe’s defenders need to make use of all resources at our disposal, including technology and social media. Rather than retreating, we must double-down on our successes, further integrating states along the EU’s periphery and strengthening Europe’s defensive collaboration.

Following his speech, Gerald participated in a panel titled “How Do We Harden Europe Without Closing It Off?” Here, Gerald elaborated on ESI’s Channel Plan to establish a migration partnership between the EU and the UK to cut down irregular and often-deadly crossings of the English Channel. Once the EU-UK partnership demonstrates its merits, its framework could then be replicated with partners outside of Europe.