Progressive Yearbook 2026

Book

In an eerie manner, 2025 resembled the ‘time of monsters’, which, according to the great Italian anti-fascist thinker Antonio Gramsci, emerges in the liminal time between the death of an old world and the birth of a new one. If the beginning of 2026 offers clues of the world that is to come, the monstrosities of 2025 still need to be analysed in depth. The right lessons will help social democrats turn the current backlash into a new mobilisation.

Contributing to this is among the objectives of this year’s FEPS Progressive Yearbook. Among the outstanding features of 2025 was the break in the transatlantic alliance, with the US swinging to a full nationalist and unilateralist position and dropping from the hitherto common platform of international law and liberal values. When it comes to major debates on global affairs, Europe has been more often on the menu rather than at the table. Just how this happened offers clues for 2026 and the years to come. And for the kind of economic and social model we can maintain and develop in the foreseeable future.

In this seventh edition of the Progressive Yearbook, we offer analyses of the EU’s domestic issues, ranging from defence and digital autonomy to what remains of the previous EU Commission’s Green Deal, as well as on global questions, such as international trade, tariffs and the new world order that is vying for birth. With Mariana Mazzucato, the Progressive Person of the Year 2026, we explore the border area of academia and public policy. All this should help activists and office holders of our political family to develop a new agenda, which aims to deepen EU integration, with economic prosperity and social justice at its heart, and to make a decisive move towards European sovereignty.

The Progressive Yearbook will be launched on 29 January, at the FEPS’ traditional New Year Reception. The New Year Reception will also mark the handover of the presidency from Maria João Rodrigues to the newly elected President, Nicolas Schmit and the awarding of the Progressive Person of the Year.

Find here the different chapters!

Table of content
Foreword

LOOKING BACK

European Chronology 2025
Democracy without comfort: The 2025 European realignment, by Bruno Jeanbart
Europe between MAGA and MEGA, by László Andor

PROGRESS IN EUROPE

To be the antithesis is not enough, by Ania Skrzypek
Why the next Multiannual Financial Framework will define Europe’s capacity to act, by René Repasi
Progressive Person of the Year 2026
Economics on the left side, László Andor interviews Mariana Mazzucato

BIG ISSUES

Plus ça change? European security and defence between geopolitical shocks and structural limits, by Gesine Weber
EU digital policy in 2025: From the loss of orientation to reclaiming European leadership in the age of AI, by Paul Nemitz
Beyond the ‘greenlash’: Building back a better European sustainability agenda, by Céline Charveriat and Sofía Martínez

NATIONAL FOCUS

National focus on Dutch politics 2025, by Hans Keman
Preserving democracy and the rules-based liberal order, by Mariola Urrea Corres

GLOBAL FOCUS

The trade and tariff war: Implications for the EU and the World Trade Organization’s multilateral trading system, by Maarten Smeets
The indefensibility of Europe in Gaza: How the EU failed the rules-based order, by Daniela Huber
The new global order in the making, by Maria João Rodrigues

PREDICTIONS

Magyar hope, Hungarian uncertainty, by Balázs Böcskei
Prospects for peace and reconstruction in Ukraine, by Ana E. Juncos Garcia
Towards 2026: What to expect from the first-ever EU Anti-Poverty Strategy?, by Danai Konstantinidou and Slavina Spasova
What will happen with the Multiannual Financial Framework negotiations in 2026?, by Eulalia Rubio
A 2026 with more flotillas and fewer double standards, by Alvaro Oleart
The backlash against green capitalism and the battle for Europe’s future, by Halliki Kreinin

BIOGRAPHIES