A European perspective on the race to scale. This keynote sets the stage for the day, examining how policy, strategy, and vision can align to turn Europe’s innovation potential into geopolitical strength - and how leadership at the EU level can shape a more secure, competitive, and climate-resilient continent.

We have entered the ‘Electricity Age’, driven by AI’s soaring demand and industrial decarbonization. While digital innovation dominates headlines, its future depends on the power grid. The keynote reframes energy security as technological sovereignty and calls the grid a core driver of competitiveness.

Setting the scene on how to systemically advance the energy transition, including concise presentations from seven cleantech scaleups in the RESPOND Scaleup Pilot. The scaleups will position their solutions within the energy system and outline growth milestones, scaling ambitions and their potential for systemic impact through collaboration.

A frank debate on Europe’s competitiveness in the global cleantech race. As Asia accelerates and the U.S. reshapes industrial policy, which forms of innovation offer credible pathways to European industrial leadership? What does it take to turn innovation into bankable, manufacturable impact and take leadership in technology and strategic autonomy?

An inspiring talk bridging technology and human purpose, reflecting on how innovation can serve not only technological and economic progress, but also strengthen resilience, foster cooperation across sectors, and contribute meaningfully to the common good.

Power politics is back. As global rules fracture and the WTO order fades, Europe risks becoming a rule-taker on trade, AI, energy, and critical resources. This conversation examines what a credible European offer to the world must look like to restore geostrategic agency: modernising Europe’s power toolkit and forging global partnerships beyond NATO and the G7 to shape the next global order. In an era of tariffs and weaponised interdependence, Europe must work with global middle powers to avoid being trapped in superpower rivalry. It must evolve from a peace and economic project to a fully-fledged geostrategic actor.

As Europe races to secure a stable, carbon-neutral energy supply, its member states are not placing the same bets. This session explores strategic divergences between three key EU industrial nations. Poland is accelerating renewables through major investments in onshore and offshore wind, while Sweden is reversing its nuclear phase-out to strengthen energy security and grid stability. Germany, meanwhile, continues to navigate its Energiewende. Bringing together ministers from all three countries, this high-level panel examines whether these differing strategies can be integrated—turning national diversity into collective strength or revealing conflicting visions for Europe’s energy future.

This session marks the German launch of the Edelman Trust Barometer 2026, presented by Edelman in cooperation with the Atlantik-Brücke, in the context of the Munich Security Conference. Drawing on 26 years of trust data, the conversation will explore how trust has been shaped by geopolitical disruption, societal polarization and economic uncertainty - and how it can be actively rebuilt. The session will focus on the role of leadership across business, politics and society in restoring confidence, legitimacy and social cohesion in Germany.

Europe’s energy independence is an urgent imperative. But achieving it requires capital: massive, strategic and patient. This session explores how Europe can mobilize the investments needed to secure its energy future. Key questions include: How can Europe mobilize its private capital? If Europe wants to be energy independent – can it afford to be financially independent? What would make European energy projects truly investable? And how can the continent leverage partnerships and investments beyond its borders without compromising strategic autonomy?

What would truly move the needle for European CEOs to stay, invest and grow in Europe?

This session explores where Europe goes next and how industrial leaders and policymakers plan to get there. Europe’s CEOs face a defining challenge: remaining competitive amid high energy costs and global realignment. The discussion will outline the scale of this challenge, the strategies being deployed to turn it into opportunity, and the regulatory shifts needed to unlock growth. Bringing together industrial leaders and European policymakers, the session examines how CEOs are driving European competitiveness from the front lines.

Can Europe trade complacency for "wartime" speed? This session explores how the ERLG is driving re-industrialization through new coalitions of action and "Made in Europe" policies. As the global order shifts, European leaders face a defining challenge: reclaiming strategic sovereignty in energy and technology. Bringing together industrial CEOs, financial experts, and policymakers, the panel will debate the financing, regulatory agility, and local content rules needed to turn energy security into a sovereign competitive engine for growth.

Artificial intelligence is set to have far-reaching implications for Europe’s energy system, as the rapid expansion of data centers and AI infrastructure accelerates electricity demand growth. Meeting this demand securely, affordably, and sustainably will test Europe’s energy infrastructure, investment frameworks, and policy coordination.

At the same time, AI has the potential to become a powerful tool for the energy sector, improving system efficiency, optimizing grid operations, and accelerating the integration of new technologies. These benefits are not automatic and will depend on timely investment, regulatory clarity, and the ability to manage new risks, including cybersecurity and supply chain dependencies. This session will explore how Europe can navigate the opportunities and challenges created by AI-driven energy demand through solution-oriented approaches. It will examine the policy choices, investment priorities, and partnerships required to ensure AI strengthens energy security, manages costs, and reinforces industrial competitiveness.

We live in an era in which political and economic choices are increasingly shaped by worst-case scenarios, from security risks and demographic pressures to climate and technological disruption. But democracies do not endure through crisis management alone. They also depend on confidence, purpose, and optimism. This closing conversation explores the psychological and geopolitical forces shaping Europe’s future at a moment of acceleration. As energy security and industrial competitiveness re-emerge as core elements of sovereignty, Europe faces a decisive test: whether it will continue to manage uncertainty reactively or use this moment to design a new, forward-looking model of strength. The session challenges the impulse to replicate past models and instead asks how Europe can forge a new sovereign path, one that aligns scientific excellence, industrial capability, democratic legitimacy, and collaboration. The focus is not on avoiding vulnerability, but on transforming it into a catalyst for long-term resilience and leadership.

A  rising cohort of geopolitically influential states is translating great power competition into strategic leverage over energy, technology, and critical supply chains. By balancing relations between Washington, Beijing, and Brussels, states across the Euro Mediterranean region and the Indo-Pacific are shaping economic and energy corridors that are redefining global investment flows and positioning themselves as key connectors between regions. As Europe’s energy security becomes increasingly dependent on cross-border electricity, green hydrogen, and diversified supply chains, emerging economic corridors linking the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific are transforming energy and trade flows, consolidating influence over future energy chokepoints, and accelerating low-carbon infrastructure development.

This session examines how Europe can engage proactively with these states and regions to build resilient, low-carbon economic corridors, secure trusted supply chains, and align critical infrastructure investments with long-term energy security and climate objectives.

It is self-evident by now that China and the West are locked in an escalating tech competition, driven by export controls, market restrictions, and digital sovereignty policies, with far-reaching consequences from artificial intelligence to the global green transition. This rivalry has exposed deep mutual dependencies, as supply chain disruptions force companies to adapt to a more uncertain future. As attention shifts to the next generation of general-purpose technologies, the central question is how the West can secure future economic security and competitiveness. While it retains a strong research and development edge, it continues to struggle with commercialization and scale. Ensuring long-term economic resilience will require overcoming today’s technological vulnerabilities.

The Arctic is no longer a remote frontier; it is a central arena for 21st-century energy security. A rapidly changing climate, new economic opportunities, and a fractured geopolitical landscape have thrust the region to the forefront of global strategic stakes.

This new reality presents a major strategic challenge for the European Union and the West, highlighting the urgent need to forge a coherent, forward-looking policy for the region.

This high-level session explores “the new era for the Arctic" by focusing on the profound trilemma at its heart: How to balance the urgent need for stable energy for Europe and the world, the global imperative of the green transition, and the new realities of regional security?

The global energy map is undergoing a fundamental structural realignment. As security priorities shift and traditional alliances are tested, the hydrocarbon sector finds itself at the centre of a complex strategic tug-of-war. The future of oil and gas is being shaped by the relationship between the immediate need for reliable fossil fuels and the long-term strategic imperative of defossilization. This session moves beyond the familiar debates to examine the actual mechanics of the new energy order.

In an era increasingly defined by great power competition and the return of "power politics," the architecture of international cooperation faces a critical stress test. This session explores the strategic necessity of multilateralism—not merely as an ideal, but as a pragmatic tool for global stability.

The conversation will examine how nations and institutions can navigate a fragmented geopolitical landscape to find common ground. Moving beyond rigid alliances, the speakers will discuss the art of compromise and the mechanisms needed to sustain cooperation on economic security and resilience, even when global powers diverge.