The Aspen Junior Fellows Dialogue is inspired by the Aspen Leadership Seminars, The Aspen Institute’s flagship program in the United States. For over seventy-five years, these seminars have served as a globally recognized model for advanced training, debate, and reflection. This meeting took place at the headquarters of Aspen Institute Italia in Venice—the very city where, seventy years ago (May 29-30, 1956), the Report was approved that would form the basis for the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community, signed in Rome the following spring.
Through the examination and discussion of classical and contemporary texts, the debate developed along two main lines.
The first pillar involves a contemporary revisiting of the question Paul Valéry asked in 1919: What is the European spirit? What was it yesterday, and what is it today? While Europe gave birth to philosophical and scientific thought, its structures, and its dreams, Europe now struggles to keep pace with China and the United States. Is the European spirit in contradiction with the world it created? The discussion explored the paths taken by other global powers, starting with China, and addressed Thomas Mann’s inquiry into whether the “classical-humanistic Mediterranean tradition is a constitutive part of humanity—and therefore eternally human—or merely the secondary spiritual form of a liberal bourgeois era, destined to perish with it.” Moving beyond self-referential temptations, the Fellows questioned what truly unites Europeans today, what the outcome of that “daily plebiscite” required to be a nation would be, and what vision could relaunch a Europe that some see as “trapped between marvelous memories and boundless hopes” (Valéry).
The second line of inquiry explored the “new world” generated by the perspectives of Artificial Intelligence and scientific progress in fields such as health and space. Moving from the “world of the day before yesterday” (the advent of electronics and the PC), the dialogue pushed toward the “world of the day after tomorrow,” examining the evolution of AI and the new frontiers of life, new forms of governance and the capacity for autonomous thought unconditioned by information bubbles, and perspectives on security and defense. Participants reflected on how the mundus novus technologicus was imagined just forty years ago compared to its current reality. Is the European spirit still a useful compass for this journey? The asymmetry with other global regions remains an unresolved knot as Europe attempts to reconcile regulation based on humanistic values with the free development of creativity and the advancement of corporate applications pushing toward unexplored ethical frontiers.
As digital natives and Erasmus students, Generation Z has experienced the sheer velocity of change firsthand. They must promote resources and goals to maintain long-term shared prosperity that balances welfare with economic and environmental sustainability. The ambition is to establish solutions for an effective and efficient Europe capable of responding to the crisis of multilateralism and new geopolitical dynamics (the “return of empires”).
Amidst new conflicts and “hot and cold” wars, the dream of “perpetual peace”—which Europe achieved as its primary objective—is no longer guaranteed. In an era of de-globalization, Europe risks remaining peripheral. The questions raised by Albert Camus in his 1955 Athens lecture on The Future of European Civilization remain central:
“For a long time, ‘sovereignty’ has thrown a wrench into the gears of international history. It will continue to do so. We must fight to overcome these obstacles and create Europe—at last, a Europe where Paris, Athens, Rome, and Berlin will be the nerve centers of a ‘middle empire’ that can, in its own way, play its role in the history of tomorrow.”