01/09/2025
At The Good Lobby, we believe Europe needs not just sound policies, but bold imagination. Yet as Teresa Bandeira de Carvalho pointed out in EUobserver, the city that “markets itself as the home of visionary policy, […] breeds a culture where vision is impossible.”
Every year, thousands of young people move to the EU capital full of ambition and creativity. But too many soon find themselves buried under “a conveyor belt of potential, crushed into uniformity.” Short-term contracts, endless admin, and financial precarity grind down the very energy Brussels claims to value.
The costs are real. Surveys show rising burnout, poor mental health, and a generation of professionals too exhausted to create or challenge the status quo. And as Teresa warns, “A culture that squeezes out creativity doesn’t just lose art but it also loses ideas. And ideas are the one thing Brussels cannot afford to keep losing.”
This is more than a youth issue or a workplace issue. It’s a democracy issue. Without space for imagination, Europe risks reproducing the same stale policies at a time when fresh solutions are most needed. Too often, procedures matter more than substance, visibility more than value. Conversations echo inside the bubble, with jargon and acronyms recycled endlessly. New voices struggle to be heard, especially in a space still overwhelmingly white and male. The danger isn’t just the loss of personal passion: it’s that policymaking itself becomes formulaic, dressing up tired approaches as if they were breakthroughs.
We can see every day how much talent, courage, and creativity young Europeans bring to public life. But Brussels—and Europe more broadly—must do better to nurture that potential, not drain it away.
Teresa Bandeira de Carvalho’s article is a call to action: if Europe wants to build the future, it must start by our organisations – be they public institutions, companies and NGOs – giving its young builders room to dream, and room to act.