The Vital Context

The election of U.S. President Joe Biden has injected momentum into the tasks of renewing and revitalizing the Transatlantic partnership. EU-US leaders gathered at a landmark summit in June 2021 “to renew our Transatlantic partnership, set a Joint Transatlantic Agenda for the post-pandemic era, and commit to regular dialogue to take stock of progress. We are committed to upholding the rules-based international order.”

Since 24 February 2022, however, it has become clear that not all states now adhere to the rules-based order. Hallmarked by immense brutality and indiscriminate destruction of peoples’ lives, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has triggered the greatest migratory flow since World War II, creating, in the process, a new geopolitical reality.

The Transatlantic partnership has quickly and effectively responded to a new threat to the security of Europe.  The consequences are by no means fully apparent, but they are very likely to include greater unity of purpose and action. These are among the objectives to which both the EU (Strategic Compass adopted in March) and NATO (Strategic Concept to be adopted in June) are committed.

At the same time, new forms of Transatlantic cooperation, strongly supported by TPN, are emerging across a broad field of endeavor. These add substance to the TPN Project “Towards Transatlantic Partnership 2030” and help to sharpen our focus on priorities, policies, and direction of travel.

We have launched a politically led initiative entitled “Transatlantic Relationship and Strategy 2030: Developing A New Vision,” bringing together a diverse set of US and European stakeholders with the objective of developing recommendations for a constructive, forward-looking agenda and vision for the Transatlantic Partnership.

In September 2020, we published an interim report entitled “The TPN Papers: Towards Transatlantic Partnership 2030’’.  “The Substantive Phase” was added at Transatlantic Week in July 2021, focusing on priority areas for action across five key topics: Geopolitical and Security, Economy and Trade, Digital Transformation, Sustainable Development, and Transatlantic Partnership. Included within the Transatlantic Partnership topic are recommendations about the right transatlantic institutions needed for the effectiveness of the partnership. Most recently, an ‘Annual Stocktaking Analysis on NATO/US/EU security structures: where do we need to go now?’ by Dr. Jamie Shea has been added.