Over the course of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7), the Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities programme (SSH) has financed various projects on “Europe in the World”.

Several research foci have run through these projects, notably an interest in “Europe’s changing role in the world” and in “Interactions between world regions and their implications”. In Horizon 2020, the Societal Challenge 6 “Europe in a changing world - Inclusive, Innovative and Reflective Societies” equally foresees research activities on “Europe’s role as a global actor”, alongside an embedding of social sciences and humanities into other Societal Challenges with international dimensions (e.g. environment).

In the transition phase to Horizon 2020, this conference aims at taking stock of the rich research conducted on the European Union as a global actor under FP7 and at moving the debate into the future. It continues a long-standing tradition of fruitful exchanges between researchers from the EU financed collaborative SSH projects and EU policy-makers.

The conference will initially focus on significant current and future research topics by briefly presenting on-going projects and upcoming calls for proposals. In line with Horizon 2020, the event then concentrates on three major themes:

• the EU’s capacities as a global actor almost five years after the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty,
• the emblematic policy area of the neighbourhood with an emphasis on the Mediterranean, and
• the EU’s role in the wider world and key global challenges, focussing on two regions that have been less in the spotlight: Latin America and the Caribbean and the Pacific.