Bocconi Students Awarded at futurEU 2026 for Innovative EU Energy Policy Proposal
A concrete proposal for a more resilient and integrated European electricity network earned a team of Bocconi students, comprising of Filippo Branchi, Anna Montanari and Camilla Cantarini, third spot in the 2026 futurEU Competition held at the end of May in Berlin.
futurEU is a student-led initiative that brings students' ideas into real policy debate, providing a platform for the next generation of policymakers to address some of Europe's most pressing challenges. The annual competition is open to students from the CIVICA Alliance partner universities and invites students to develop policy proposals to face the EU’s main challenges – with this year’s topic being ‘Europe's Path to Resilience: Shaping the Future of Security & Defence’. 328 students from 10 CIVICA universities participated, forming 123 teams and following several rounds of evaluation 8 teams advanced to the finals in Berlin.
The team of Bocconi students was awarded 3rd place for their policy brief, "From Bottlenecks to Backbone: Rethinking EU Electricity Grid Regulation." Their proposal focused on one of the key challenges facing Europe's energy transition: electricity grids. As renewable energy production and electricity demand continue to grow, distribution grids risk in fact becoming a major bottleneck. The team identified fragmented national regulatory frameworks and a lack of forward-looking investment planning as two key obstacles and proposed reforms to support a more resilient and integrated European electricity network.
"It was a great opportunity to explore a historically national issue that now needs to be addressed at the European level. Seeing a competition inspire students to engage with so many topics about Europe’s future truly made me feel that we are on the right track," says Filippo.
First place was awarded to a team of Sciences Po students for their policy brief ‘From Spending To Capacity: Bridging Europe's Defence Resilience Gap’ examining one of Europe's key defence challenges: the gap between increased defence spending and actual production capacity. Second place went to another Sciences Po team for their policy brief, "The Arsenal Nextdoor: Ukraine's Solutions to European Drone Insecurities" - exploring how the EU could integrate Ukraine's extensive expertise in drone technology into its own defence industrial base.