The Foundation for Political Innovation is a Paris-based independent think tank which aims to influence the political debate in France and in Europe. The Foundation has two main goals: to suggest new strategies and new structures and to mobilise public opinion around new ideas. 0n European issues, the Foundation is focusing its activities both on the immediate political context (Constitution; institutional reform; enlargement…) and on the political horizon of 2025.

The Foundation has worked with Kairos Future on a vast and unique project entitled “Europeans facing globalisation” which investigates the perception of globalisation in eight Member States of the EU.

The starting point of this study “Europeans facing globalisation” is a wider reflection on the development of European civil societies. Despite the diversity of the political debates in the twenty-five Member States, overarching trends are emerging on a number of issues in the European public opinion. Thus, globalisation is an interesting topic in itself, but also as a crosscutting issue present in the European political debate. Globalisation is understood not just in the purely economic sense of greater levels of trade, but as a phenomenon which has wide-ranging societal implications affecting all of the Member States.

Furthermore, the European Union is often seen as a vector of globalisation through its policies of removing barriers to trade and the free movement of people across a wide area. As a result, many people see the EU as a source of insecurity rather than as a resource to help their governments respond to the challenges of globalisation.

The Kairos Future survey gives us an insight into the complex reactions of European citizens to globalisation.