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Europe’s old pilgrimage routes preserve more than religious heritage. They offer another relationship with time. Through walking, hospitality and unexpected encounters, they reveal what modern societies risk losing when every journey — and even rest — must deliver measurable results.
Years after leaving telecom journalism, Siu Lie Tan reappears in Tuscany—working across circular innovation, European regulation and natural cosmetics. In this Coffee Talk, she reflects on curiosity, changing direction and learning that not everything needs to follow the plan.
Michiel Scheffer wants Europe to do more than finance scientific discovery. His vision for the European Innovation Council connects research, patient capital, industrial demand and strategic procurement—turning breakthrough technologies into companies, production capacity and European power.
Under Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission has moved beyond regulation towards crisis management, industrial strategy and geopolitical coordination. Her vision is of a Europe capable of acting—but its growing executive ambition raises questions about power and accountability.
Europe has spent years demanding more engineers. At TU Eindhoven, interest in Electrical Engineering is growing just as educational capacity reaches its limits—exposing the widening gap between Europe’s industrial ambitions and its ability to train the people they require.
Europe has built strong digital rights, but technology is evolving faster than the institutions designed to protect them. As AI, biometrics and platforms reshape power, the challenge is ensuring democratic protection can keep pace.
Leiden University demonstrates that the future of Europe depends not only on applying knowledge, but on continually creating it. As artificial intelligence transforms access to information, the production of reliable new knowledge may become one of Europe’s most strategic capabilities.
Wageningen University & Research has evolved far beyond agriculture. By integrating biology, artificial intelligence, robotics and environmental science, it is helping shape the resilient food systems upon which Europe’s future health, security and sustainability increasingly depend.
Migration challenges democracies to reconcile universal human rights with the practical realities of governance, institutional capacity and public trust. The question is not whether values matter, but how they can be translated into sustainable and legitimate public policy.
Can smaller universities become strategic assets? The University of Twente demonstrates that innovation is not defined by scale alone, but by the ability to integrate technology, entrepreneurship and society into a distinctive model of European excellence.
