Top-level researchers, experts, and representatives from ten universities and research centres in eight countries, including ESADE, have met in Barcelona to launch the GLOBE project – 'Global Governance and the EU: Future Trends and Scenarios’, under the umbrella of the European Commission’s prestigious Horizon 2020 research program.

The project, coordinated by the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI), has a budget of €2.5m for the next three and a half years; and will provide policy-makers, academics, and the general public with an analysis 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.

GLOBE will be driven mainly from Barcelona, where three of the ten partners are located: ESADE Business & Law School, Barcelona Institute of Global Health (ISGlobal), and the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). Jacint Jordana, director of IBEI and professor of political science at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) is the main coordinator.

During the opening meeting, held in Barcelona on 4 and 5 February, 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. This meeting is the first step in a long-term project 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 nations, composed of European and international academics and policy-makers including: Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internationals (Spain); ESADE Business & Law School (Spain); Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium); University College, London (UK); Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Socialforschung (Germany); The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel); Facultad Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (Argentina); Universitas Bina Nusantara (Indonesia); Instituto de Salud Global Barcelona (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 a high-level analysis of the past and present problems of global governance and produce 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, climate change, 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 into two clusters. The first cluster will provide policy-makers, academics, and the general public with an analysis of the state of play in global governance, while the second cluster 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 can encourage 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).