Top-level researchers, experts and representatives from ten universities and research centres in eight different countries gathered this week in Barcelona to launch the EU-funded project GLOBE – 'Global Governance and the European Union: Future Trends and Scenarios’, under the umbrella of the European Commission’s prestigious Horizon 2020 research programme.

The project, coordinated by Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), will run a budget of 2.5 million euros over the next three and a half years; and will provide policy-makers, academics and the general public with an analytical grip on the state of play in global governance, by developing new theoretical and methodological approaches. It also hopes to equip national and European policy-makers with tools to identify constraints and opportunities in a set of global governance scenarios for 2030 and 2050.

Will provide policy-makers, academics and the general public with an analytical grip on the state of play in global governance, by developing new theoretical and methodological approaches.

The project will be driven mainly from Barcelona, where three of the ten partners are located: ESADE, Barcelona Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal, centre promoted by "la Caixa") and Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). Jacint Jordana, director of IBEI and professor of Political Science at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), will be the main coordinator.

During the kick-off meeting, held in Barcelona on February 4 and 5, Javier Solana, president of ESADE Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics (ESADEgeo), analysed today’s political, social and economic challenges for the EU and the world. The kick-off meeting is only the first step of a long-term endeavour that will run for 42 months.

First-class academic expertise of top international scholars

GLOBE brings together an academic consortium of ten partners from eight countries, composed of European and international academics and policy-makers, including Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (Spain); ESADE Business & Law School (Spain); Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium); University College London (UK); Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Socialforschung (Germany); Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel); Facultad Latinoamericana Ciencias Sociales (Argentina); Universitas Bina Nusantara (Indonesia); ISGlobal Barcelona Institute for Global Health (Spain); and Peking University (China). The strength of this consortium lies in the first-class academic expertise of top European and international scholars, which will guarantee not only high-level analysis of the past and present problems of global governance but also a set of solid forward-looking trends and scenarios.

GLOBE addresses the issues defined as strategic priorities in the 2016 EU Global Strategy – trade, development, security and climate change – as well as migration and global finance, in order to identify the major roadblocks to effective and coherent global governance by multiple stakeholders in a multipolar world.

The work will be divided in two clusters. While the first cluster will provide policy-makers, academics and the general public with an analytical grip on the state of play in global governance, the second will equip national and European policy-makers with new tools to identify constraints and opportunities in a set of global governance scenarios.

Taking into account these alternative scenarios, researchers and experts of the GLOBE project will recommend strategies on how the EU might promote enhanced global governance and deal with future challenges and gridlocks.

The project is framed under the challenge "Europe in a changing world - Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies", in the "Governance for the Future" section of the EU's Horizon 2020 programme. Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe's global competitiveness.