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Now that sufficient scientific consensus has been reached on climate change to ensure that all political parties accept the need for serious policy in this area, the debate has shifted from debating the science towards establishing the best mitigation and adaptation policies. However, the information that exists in this area today is often hard to compare and contextualise.

The Stockholm Network’s Carbon Scenarios Project aims to fill this gap by using scenarios to provide a structure for discussing and comparing different future policy options. The goal is to build plausible scenarios which can then be used to discuss responses to climate change with key stakeholders, including business, government, and the media.

The scenarios have been built in a workshop of experts from the environment, energy, business, economics and policy spheres, and we would now like to present a draft version of the scenarios and discuss their implications with a Brussels audience. This discussion will help us to refine the scenarios to improve their plausibility, communicability and educational value.

Turkey`s candidacy to join the EU brings to the fore questions of what it is to be a European and what the Union is for.

Large majorities of Europeans are opposed to Turkey`s accession: over 80 per cent in Austria, over 70 per cent in France and at least 55 per cent in Germany. Is this hesitation solely on religious grounds? Or is the controversy more profound?

This distrust is not a one way street: until recently, a majority of Turks lent strong support to EU entry. Now, according to opinion polls, many are disillusioned and disenchantment is growing.

Proponents of Turkish membership argue that the EU is not strictly defined by borders or geography. Instead of shared territory, claims EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn and others, the question is one of shared values. But what are these values? Most trends within 21st century Europe do not sustain evidence of a strong belief in a shared or common meaning. What are these values, and who defines and enforces them?

Democracy is a much vaunted asset in the EU. But democratic societies must be built by peoples themselves. Democracy can not be imported into Turkey from without by the EU and, vice versa, will the EU`s policies, including the recent Lisbon Treaty, lead Turkey closer to a strong economic and democratic future?

Paul Domjan will be speaking on the project and the scenarios at the Amigo Society (Brussels) on the 6th March. Please see upcoming events for further details.

When did you last have a GMO breakfast? Unless you carefully checked the ingredients, chances are you have ingested genetically modified cereals recently.

How much of a problem is this?

The media incites us to greet unidentified risks with great caution: the policy equivalent is the precautionary principle. This entails considerable regulation and safety precautions for the general public until any untested product or technology has been proven harmless. The approach is seemingly common sense: better safe than sorry. This can, however, put a straitjacket on research and scientific inquiry overall.

GMO crops are a case in point: these have been in use for 20 years and not a single health incident has been reported. Yet, national and EU authorities have decided that the technology which has the potential of saving millions of people from death by starvation must be suspended.

Risk management in modern societies is increasingly not based on a reasonable evaluation of probabilities. Instead it is dictated by the potentially disastrous consequences of unlikely events and infinitesimal risks. This calculus is made essentially on political, rather than scientific criteria.

Next year`s Olympics will open China to outside scrutiny as never before. But what changes will that bring? Will it mean freer media and faster political reform, or will the changes be merely cosmetic? The Chinese authorities hope a glittering games and advanced urban infrastructure will permanently change the outside world`s view of the country. But will that obscure the true picture of pollution, oppression and corruption? Will the games be a milestone on China`s path to modernisation, or a smokescreen, enabling the authoritarian one-party state regime bequeathed by Mao to dodge still further the questions that threaten its existence.

This symposium takes place within a series of policy symposia that are intended to identify and clarify the intellectual property dimension in the life sciences. They are addressed to a wide range of stakeholders, including international policymakers, government agencies, legislators, delegates, and civil society actors. The symposium offers an open forum for exchanging information and experiences in relation to the interaction between life sciences innovation and the intellectual property system.

Download the presentations from this event by clicking the links below:

The present EU leadership seems intent on introducing fundamental rules by stealth: following rejection by referenda in two countries in 2005, the Dutch and Danish parliaments may shortly submit the “Reform Treaty” to their voters.

The European constitutional debate over the last years has focused on extending supranational powers. In the face of terrorist threats and heightened security, are the citizens of an extended Europe concerned with safeguarding their rights of freedom to circulate, to associate and to trade? What will Europe become – a trading block, or something ultimately more far-reaching?

What should be the proper role of the EU in this context? How can citizens bring their liberties to bear on the “constitutional” initiatives which seem more concerned with the expediency of EU decision-making than with the limits of government?

Private security and policing has become a hot topic in Europe. The debate has come to represent the divide between a traditional approach to policing and security and a newer, dynamic way of thinking. On the one hand, local, state-oriented models (the old Europe) argue for public-private partnerships and integrated security concern. On the other, liberal thinkers and politicians are focused on economically driven models and self-ownership. We aim to look at the arguments on each side and weigh their merits on grounds of effectiveness, efficiency and equity.

Our debate will focus on the academic arguments, legal frameworks and policy issues surrounding the field of private security and policing, with particular emphasis on European Union initiatives.

All of these questions are impossible to answer, since the future does not exist and there are no grounds for predicting it. What can be addressed is the way we see the present and the way we build up the assumptions that shape our choices.

The aim of this talk is to examine how the way we think about the future influences the choices we make by imagining other ways of describing the potential of the present. The elements of a few scenarios will be sketched and used to examine current anticipatory assumptions.

The event will start at 1900 with drinks and canapés served.

Everyone welcome.