Age Steenbreker is the Vice-chair of the European Public Policy Conference (EPPC), a yearly student-led policy conference, and a first-year MIA student at the Hertie School where he focuses on International Security. He also serves as the Head of the Europe and Eurasia Desk at Global Weekly. He sat with The Governance Post to discuss the importance of the Conference, this year’s theme and what to expect from this year’s conference, which will take place at the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH) on the 25 and 26 of April. With the support of IPLI Foundation and Hertie School, the EPPC is organized every year by first-year Hertie students to discuss pressing policy challenges in Europe, such as EU integration, climate, tech and migration. Through Hertie’s CIVICA network, students from universities across Europe are invited to attend the conference. For its 18th year, EPPC is organizing an essay contest that will award Hertie students with accommodation and travel costs for the event in Warsaw.

Europe's post-war order was built on a simple bet: that openness and interdependence would guarantee prosperity and peace. Russia's war in Ukraine and Silicon Valley's grip on European digital infrastructure have exposed the limits of that bet. Now, as the United States turns its attention to escalating conflicts in the Middle East, the question of whether Europe can continue to outsource its security, military or technological, has never been more urgent. Bruno Steel argues that territorial defence and technological sovereignty are not separate challenges but two sides of the same coin, and that without confronting both, European autonomy remains a comfortable illusion.

For many, democracy had been a distant promise – something spoken of in speeches, printed in newspapers and instructed in classrooms, yet rarely felt in daily life. Corruption had seeped into offices, fear had lived in the hearts of citizens and justice had only been served to a privileged few. To others, those twenty years had been a fragile chance to dream; an imperfect system, yes, but still a space where women studied, young people hoped and families imagined a better future. Now, as the gunfire faded and the Taliban took their places, all those memories returned like a painful echo.