Tomorrow’s policies must be both visionary and efficient to meet the challenges of the pandemic and its aftermath. Our board members Michael Miebach and Judith Siller and our executive director Dominic Schwickert explain why progressive ideas belong on the agenda right now and take an optimistic look at 2021.

Revisit the highlights of the Progressive Governance Digital Summit 2020, including remarks by Madeleine Albright, Lodewijk Asscher, Annalena Baerbock, Nadia Calviño, Anneliese Dodds, Anke Hassel, Matthew Goodwin, Joschka Fischer, Heiko Maas, Mariana Mazzucato, Dani Rodrik, Olaf Scholz, Matthew Taylor, Adam Tooze, Catherine E. de Vries.

The online summit will host more than 30 sessions and focus on transformation, democracy, progressive leadership and Europe’s role in a multilateral world. Olaf Scholz, Neera Tanden, Maja Göpel, Hubertus Heil, Dani Rodrik and up to 100 other speakers from Europe and North America will participate in the event. It will take place from 15 to 19 June 2020.

Das Progressive Zentrum signs the call “Learning from the crisis: empower civil society organisations!” and calls for an active digital ecosystem that offers real choices.

After innovating its governing structure, Das Progressive Zentrum is now led by an extended executive team, which is comprised of the Executive Director as well as three Heads of Programmes, the Head of Office and the Head of Communications.

The Golden Autumn night was this year’s political evening event of Das Progressive Zentrum.

Executive Director Dominic Schwickert reflects on the months leading up to the European elections and on reorganising the team. An editorial for the upcoming newsletter 1/2019.

The Innovation in Politics Awards are presented annually to honour courageous and creative political work throughout Europe – regardless of party or country. This year, 9 political projects from Germany made it to the finals. An international jury of 1,053 European citizens selected 80 finalists from more than 600 nominations. The winners will be announced at a gala event in November in Vienna.

After the establishment of a new grand coalition on 14th of March 2018 in Germany, Fedor Ruhose, Policy Fellow at Das Progressive Zentrum, and DPZ-Director Dominic Schwickert analyse the current state of the centre-left parties, in particular the SPD. They point out upcoming challenges in the national and European context and set out five key challenges which German social democrats must overcome.

Four policy briefs, several workshops and two high-profile speeches conclude the more than two-years transnational dialogue process at eye level with young, promising thinkers from Greece, Portugal, Italy, France, Spain and Germany.

How could populist movements become that strong in France, Italy and Germany? And how can progressives push back their influence? Eight proposals.

Over 700 guests attended the Progressive Governance Symposium and our tenth-anniversary celebration on 3 July 2017. Managing Director Dominic Schwickert takes stock of the day.

Conference Programme

Progressives are convinced that in times such as these, when fundamental questions are being raised about the future of our societies, a narrow-minded approach to politics is out of place. Only through wide-ranging debates, exchanging ideas and opinions, and interacting with scientific and social research can fresh impetus be generated to take us beyond the current impasse of political debate.

Terra Nova (France), Volta (Italy), and Das Progressive Zentrum (Germany) present strategic answers to the crucial question of how progressives and democrats across Europe should counter populism.

John Podesta is best known for his service as chief of staff to former US president Bill Clinton. He further chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, served as a Counselor to Barack Obama and is the founder of the our US-partner think tank “Center for American Progress” (CAP). On May 3, 2017, Das Progressive Zentrum had the honour to welcome John Podesta for political talks in the German capital.

On 7-9 October 2016, Das Progressive Zentrum joined the third edition of the Cluny Forum as a cooperation partner. Created three years ago by the French-German Association “Trait d’Union”, this Forum creates new bridges between young and innovative managers from business as well as from the civil society working in one or both countries. Gathered together, they exchange experiences about their own working environment, discuss common challenges and design new ideas in a European perspective.

Important elections lie ahead in Germany. In the autumn of 2017, the German federal election will take place and prior to that, there is the politically highly significant state election in North Rhine-Westphalia. Against this background, we invited Guillaume Liegey to Das Progressive Zentrum in order to share some of his ideas about modern campaigning strategies.

On 23 and 24 September 2016, the European Reformists Summit entitled „Rebuilding Trust“ took place in Lyon. The event, being composed of an introductory roundtable, three workshops and a closing session, was organised by a European network of think tanks, consisting of Das Progressive Zentrum (Germany), Les Gracques (France), Institut Montaigne (France), Astrid (Italy) as well as Policy Network (UK).

On Friday, July 1, we hosted a roundtable discussion on the US American Presidential Elections. We were delighted to engage in a discussion with Ken Gude (Senior Fellow with the National Security Team, Center for American Progress), Paul Nolte (Professor of Contemporary History, Free University of Berlin), and Barbara Junge (Deputy Editor, taz.die tageszeitung). The roundtable was chaired by Sudha David-Wilp (Deputy Director Berlin Office and Senior Transatlantic Fellow, The German Marshall Fund of the United States).