Citizens in the EU still depend largely on fossil gas and other fossil fuels to keep their homes warm. After the massive increase of fossil gas prices in 2022, another global fossil fuel price crisis unfolds. There are clean and affordable domestic alternatives for heating, such as solar thermal energy, sustainable bioenergy and geothermal and ambient energy. Using renewable electricity for heating is the solution for cutting both emissions and households’ energy bills. The electric heat pump is the key technology, using electricity to pump up the temperature level of ambient or geothermal heat.

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Democratic by design

Report
Who currently owns tech? Are our digital spaces really participatory? A few usual suspects like Meta and Google currently dominate the market, de facto controlling democratic discourse online, even though no one really elected them. How can we fix this?
Affordable renewable heating with heat pumps

Affordable renewable heating with heat pumps

Infographic
Europe cannot afford fossil fuels for heating our homes. The good news: We have an abundant potential of domestic renewable energy sources. The infographic shows how heat pumps replace fossil fuels. They can run on renewable power from the electricity grid or from solar photovoltaic panels on the rooftop and tap into the different renewable heat sources such as ambient air, geothermal heat or warm waste water. Like other renewable heat suppliers, they can also feed into district heat networks that connect different consumers. We explain which solutions make these technologies accessible for all.
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Rethinking Arctic governance

Policy paper
The Arctic is at a geopolitical crossroads. Russia's war on Ukraine has paralysed the Arctic Council, Trump's ambitions over Greenland are fracturing transatlantic trust, and the climate crisis risks being pushed off the political agenda. As the region's governance vacuum deepens, the EU faces a pivotal choice: seize the moment or be sidelined. This policy paper sets out how the EU can build a credible, legitimate role in a rapidly shifting Arctic.
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Defending Equality in an Age of Democratic Decline

Report
This report by Forbidden Colours argues that the EU’s Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025 was designed for a political moment that has since shifted dramatically. Although it secured important legal advances, it failed to anticipate the rise of coordinated anti-rights movements challenging fundamental freedoms across Europe. As the EU prepares its 2026–2030 Strategy, a decisive shift is needed: gender equality must be anchored as a core pillar of democratic resilience, security and rule-of-law protection – not treated as a standalone social policy.
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Europe’s Indo-Pacific security gap: A new dataset on the EU coordination deficit

Böll EU Brief
Europe is more present in the Indo-Pacific than most people realise, and far less coordinated than it needs to be. A new dataset of 1,077 cooperation entries, spanning EU institutions and all 27 Member States, reveals that European security engagement in the region has accelerated sharply since 2021. But activity across defence industry, military deployments, and institutional frameworks remains fragmented, duplicated, and largely invisible at EU level. In this Böll EU Brief, Jacob Mardell maps the coordination deficit, and sets out six concrete steps to close it.

#StandWithUkraine

We declare our full solidarity with Ukraine. We stand by the side of our Ukrainian partners and colleagues, and at the same time also by the side of our partners in Russian civil society who are under harsh state repression.

Read our statement

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