Insights

Green chemistry offers a transformative approach to producing chemicals by prioritizing environmental protection and sustainability. It employs natural, benign ingredients like seaweed-derived alginates as biodegradable alternatives to plastics and captures CO₂ emissions to create sustainable fuels for aviation and shipping. This science promotes resource efficiency by turning manufacturing waste into raw materials and developing smart materials with adjustable properties. Recognized for its innovation potential and economic benefits, green chemistry necessitates collaboration across sectors including business, policy, and education to achieve a sustainable chemical future for society.
We’re ‘green chemists’ – why we think this emerging science can transform the way the world uses its resources
Fines against social media companies for harming users, especially children, are rising but remain too small to impact corporate behavior significantly. Recent U.S. court rulings hold platforms like Instagram and YouTube accountable for design features contributing to mental health issues. This shift reframes social media from neutral tools to products with foreseeable harm, sparking calls for stricter regulations globally. However, current penalties represent a negligible fraction of tech giants’ vast profits, allowing them to treat fines as a business cost without changing harmful design or monetization practices. The situation parallels early tobacco litigation, suggesting meaningful change requires larger coordinated legal and regulatory efforts.
Financial services, ICT, Education
Is big tech facing its big tobacco moment?
Around one in six adolescents globally report self-harm, often seen less as an individual mental illness and more as a response to intense social pressures such as family conflict, social exclusion, and educational stress. Research across diverse cultures reveals that self-harm serves as a way to regulate overwhelming emotions or signal distress linked to social challenges. Current responses focus mainly on individual diagnosis and treatment, neglecting broader social factors. Effective prevention requires addressing family dynamics, school pressures, stigma, and inequality, and creating environments where young people can express distress openly. Integrating social context into policy and practice remains a critical but unmet need.
Teen self‑harm: responses should focus on social context, not just mental health
The EU faces a shifting global trade environment marked by the rise of geopolitics and erosion of the rules-based multilateral trading system. In response, it has developed new trade policy tools under the concept of Open Strategic Autonomy to balance openness with economic and security interests. Key measures include recalibrating free trade agreements to diversify markets, adopting the Anti-Coercion Instrument for streamlined retaliation against economic coercion, enhancing foreign direct investment screening to counter state capitalism, tightening export controls, and implementing the International Procurement Instrument to ensure reciprocity in access to EU public contracts. The EU’s success hinges on its ability to defend itself and revitalize its economy amid geopolitical competition.
Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mauritania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Venezuela | Financial services
Can trade policy help the EU thrive in a geopolitical world?
Oil and gas supply disruptions critically threaten global pharmaceutical production, as nearly all medicine raw materials derive from petrochemicals. Essential drugs, from basic painkillers to complex treatments, rely on oil-based feedstocks, and medical supplies like syringes and gloves depend on petrochemical plastics. Asia-Pacific, especially India and China—major producers of generic drugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients—faces significant risks due to reliance on the Strait of Hormuz for crude oil. Supply constraints fuel price hikes and increase counterfeit medicine risks, threatening public health. Governments must prioritize pharmaceutical supply chains, impose price controls, subsidize manufacturers, tighten regulatory oversight, and enhance public awareness to ensure affordable, safe medicines reach vulnerable populations.
Financial services, Health
Medicines and Oil: How Energy Bottlenecks Put Health at Risk
Europe's current health data initiatives focus largely on traditional, sector-specific information. However, non-traditional data sources—such as platforms, sensors, mobility systems, and consumer behavior—represent a significant opportunity to advance health and well-being research. Analysis of over 290 studies shows these datasets enable earlier detection of health risks, reveal inequalities, and link environmental factors to disease outcomes. To fully realize this potential, Europe must address challenges like fragmented data access, low public trust, and insufficient long-term funding. The report recommends six policy actions to establish more effective health data ecosystems.
Financial services, Education, ICT, Health
Realising the potential of non-traditional data to improve health and wellbeing
Generative AI is rapidly advancing the field of personalized persuasion by enabling hyper-targeted messaging based on individuals' demographics, behaviors, values, and personality traits. This technology allows companies to efficiently gather personal data—from surveys, digital footprints, or even chatbot interactions—to create customized content that resonates more deeply with each person. Research shows personalized messages outperform generic ones, with AI able to tailor communication across multiple traits simultaneously. However, excessive personalization risks backlash if perceived as invasive. A new framework categorizes how AI gathers information, selects personal traits, crafts messages, and delivers them, highlighting both opportunities and ethical considerations in AI-driven influence.
Is AI Mastering the Art of Persuasion?
Europe’s support for Ukraine remains resilient despite emerging war fatigue after four years of conflict. Initially unified, European governments imposed sanctions on Russia, sent military aid, and accepted refugees. Public backing was strong due to a “rally around the flag” effect. However, ongoing economic strains—including energy price surges from Russia’s tactics—prolonged conflict uncertainty, and competing global crises have tested this unity. While signs of declining enthusiasm and increased skepticism appear, especially in countries with large refugee populations or political shifts, Europe’s political consensus on supporting Ukraine has largely endured, reflecting durable commitment amid challenges.
Latin America
War fatigue has yet to break Europe’s commitment to Ukraine
Generative AI providers scrape journalistic content at large scale, offering minimal traffic or compensation, while AI bot traffic burdens infrastructure, especially for smaller news organizations. Declining publisher traffic and zero-click searches threaten already fragile news business models. AI's opacity, content inaccuracies, and bypassing of original sources risk undermining information integrity crucial for democracy. Additionally, concentration of AI power and English-centric media bias diminish pluralism, equity, and diversity in news coverage.
Media, Democracy, and Generative AI: A Critical Juncture
Incentivising social and community enterprises (SCOs) to trade strengthens their financial resilience and autonomy without compromising their social goals. Research on the Match Trading program, which matches earned income with grants, reveals that commercialisation leads to a cognitive shift rather than an ethical conflict. Leaders adopt commercial mindsets, focusing more on customers, pricing, and market demand, which subtly transforms organizational behavior. The program’s training component fosters professionalization, improving financial management and operational systems, while peer support enhances learning. Grants remain valuable, complementing earned income for sustainable impact.
Financial services, Education
How an incentive to trade shapes social and community enterprises
The Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing on May 14-15 demonstrated a cautious and formal engagement without major breakthroughs or surprises. Both leaders maintained decorum, avoiding contentious topics like human rights. However, China’s strategic partners such as Iran and Russia showed unease; Iran undertook hostile actions against Chinese-linked ships, signaling discontent over China’s warming ties with the U.S. and its weapon sales to regional rivals. Russia publicly criticized China’s limited commitment to their partnership. The meeting revealed China’s careful, calculated approach to international partnerships, contrasting with the U.S.'s deal-focused style under Trump. This fragile "strategic stability" underscores complex regional tensions and differing diplomatic calculations among global powers.
After the Trump-Xi Meeting in Beijing: a Fragile
Global tensions stem from complex geopolitical dynamics across multiple regions. In the Middle East, the Israel-Iran conflict is likened to a Thucydides Trap, with both nations vying for regional dominance, likely resulting in an unstable, incomplete agreement. The Strait of Hormuz blockade threatens global food security, as oil-derived fertilizers are vital for many countries. In Ukraine, the conflict remains stalemated, with EU financial aid critical and U.S. satellite intelligence essential to Ukraine’s defense, while Russia’s sustained war effort is funded by hydrocarbon sales. The possibility of nuclear weapon use remains if Russia’s defeat looms. China’s rapid rise as an “electrostate,” dominating industrial production and renewable energy, presents structural imbalances due to export-driven suppression of domestic consumption, posing challenges for global economic stability.
Israel, Ukraine | Financial services
Ben-Ami and Borrell: The keys to the new world disorder
Leaders must address toxic behavior swiftly to prevent damage to team morale and their own reputation, as delaying action can have costly consequences. Embracing failure through acknowledgment and learning fosters redemption and improved team dynamics. Resilience involves reframing negative thoughts positively, setting achievable goals, and progressively challenging oneself after setbacks. In complex, values-based disputes without clear answers, leaders should zoom out to reframe conflicts, seek trusted advisors for broader perspectives, and transparently own missteps to build trust and effectively navigate tough decisions.
Take 5: When the Going Gets Tough, Lead
Major oil and gas companies largely fail to lead the energy transition, owning only 1.42% of global renewable energy and generating 0.01% of their output from renewables. Their investments in renewable energy, biofuels, carbon capture and storage (CCS), green hydrogen, and carbon offsetting primarily serve as "false solutions" that maintain fossil fuel dependence rather than promote decarbonization. Projects such as CCS often extend oil extraction via enhanced oil recovery, while renewables sometimes power fossil fuel operations instead of reducing overall emissions. These initiatives frequently cause land conflicts and harm Indigenous and local communities by encroaching on ancestral lands without proper consent. Public subsidies fund many of these projects, enabling continued fossil fuel use under the guise of climate action and delaying systemic transformation.
We reviewed 48 ‘low carbon’ projects and found they were becoming part of the fossil fuel problem
International efforts to regulate AI in military weapons face significant obstacles due to fears that agreements could disadvantage signatories against less restricted adversaries. Despite previous commitments advocating human oversight, risk assessments, and transparency in AI use, key powers like the US, Russia, and China have resisted binding agreements or clear definitions, particularly regarding lethal autonomous weapons systems ("killer robots"). Current conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, and Iran serve as testing grounds for rapidly advancing AI-enabled tools, such as intelligence software and AI-assisted drones, outpacing regulatory development. Human oversight risks diminishing into passive approval, raising concerns about automation bias, misinformation, and ethical misuse. The lack of enforceable international frameworks sustains the peril of harmful AI applications in warfare.
Education
Fears of helping the enemy are blocking international agreements on AI in weapons systems
Violent attacks on Jews in London have reignited debates on antisemitism and the boundaries between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. Prime Minister Keir Starmer attributed the crisis to hate preachers, hostile foreign states, and notably, those who downplay antisemitism, condemning slogans like "globalise the intifada" as calls for terrorism. While some British Jews feel vulnerable and unsupported, especially after Hamas's 2023 attacks, there is concern that broad critiques of Israel are wrongly labeled antisemitic. Diverse opposition to Israeli policies risks being oversimplified into an undifferentiated deadly ideology called antizionism, which ignores Palestinian suffering and stifles nuanced debate. Starmer’s rigid stance overlooks the complex meanings behind such political expressions.
What Keir Starmer got wrong about Zionism and antisemitism
AI decision support comes as attention signals, which highlight critical moments without prescribing actions, and action signals, which provide specific recommendations. A study with 300 chess players showed action signals improve immediate decisions but impair subsequent independent performance, causing an "uncharted waters" effect where reliance on AI reduces cognitive engagement after guidance ends. Attention signals prompt deeper thinking, improving both immediate and follow-up decisions without undermining autonomy. Thus, action signals suit urgent contexts needing fast responses, while attention signals promote sustained engagement and better long-term decision-making, highlighting trade-offs in AI guidance across domains such as finance and aviation.
Should AI Nudge You or Tell You What to Do?
Generative AI offers significant opportunities but poses growing risks to freedom of expression and democratic processes. These risks include fragmentation of the information space via hyper-personalized content, lack of transparency, accuracy, reliability, and potential bias and manipulation in AI-generated outputs. The Council of Europe's Guidance Note examines these issues through the lens of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, detailing Generative AI’s characteristics, legal protections, and societal impacts such as deep fakes, disinformation, and opinion manipulation. It concludes with actionable recommendations for policymakers to promote freedom of expression through an agile governance framework focusing on observation, assessment, enabling, and empowerment.
Education
Guidance Note on the implications of Generative AI for freedom of expression
SAFE AI is a governance framework designed for ethical AI use in humanitarian action. It guides organizations through a four-stage Implementation Journey—from defining the problem to deployment and monitoring—using a three-tier risk classification with corresponding obligations. At each stage, formal Decision Gates evaluate progress based on humanitarian principles, protection needs, and responsible-refusal criteria. The framework employs specific tools including an Onboarding and Readiness Checklist, Impact Assessments, Architecture and Procurement Guides, Technical Assurance processes, and a Transparency Card to ensure accountability, risk management, and adherence to ethical standards throughout the AI lifecycle.
SAFE AI Framework: Standards and Assurance Framework for Ethical AI in Humanitarian Action
A super El Niño, causing extreme heat and drought, threatens to severely reduce global harvests and worsen food insecurity, especially in vulnerable regions like sub-Saharan Africa. This climate event disrupts weather patterns, aggravating risks already amplified by climate change. Modern agriculture’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers, and long supply chains adds fragility, while political and economic factors—such as wars, inequality, and debt—exacerbate hunger. Livestock production, a major emitter and consumer of resources, intensifies these problems. Structural reform toward plant-based, agroecological farming is urged to reduce emissions, conserve land, and enhance resilience, contrasting with current subsidy-driven, fossil-fuel-dependent industrial methods.
Latin America
How a super El Niño could trigger global famine

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