This booklet represents the latest step in the ‘7Ds’ project by the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies — the official political foundation of the EPP — and is the fruit of a collective effort led by Mr Klaus Welle, Chairman of the Martens Centre Academic Council and former Secretary General of the European Parliament.

In 2023, the Martens Centre published the strategy document 7Ds for Sustainability: 175 Proposals for the Next Legislature, which contains concrete proposals aimed at future-proofing EU policy in seven crucial areas: Debt, Decarbonisation, Defence, Democracy, Demography, De-risking globalisation and Digitalisation.

Sustainability was chosen as the guiding principle to ensure that the policies reconcile the needs of both the present and the future, and systematically include the interests of the next generations.

This text has already inspired reflection on what to do over the next five years. The discussions leading to it were based on Christian Democrat and conservative thinking and the available in-house expertise of the Martens Centre.

For the next phase of intense discussions about the programme to be implemented during the 2024–9 legislature, the Martens Centre invited renowned external experts to put forward their own, more extensive proposals based on the original document, thereby deepening the available expertise.

This led to seven ‘In Depth’ publications which were launched last April. As the new legislature has just begun, we are now offering you a consolidated version of these seven papers, preceded by an article written by Chairman Welle in 2023 to explain the rationale behind the entire project.

We hope that these proposals will help to clarify the way forward at a critical juncture, when the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Council are negotiating on and finalising their strategic priorities.

Mikuláš Dzurinda
WMCES President