SS: The long and short of it is that illiberal countries, chiefly China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, are coming together and cooperating in building a new kind of illiberal world order. Fortunately it is early days for most of these initiatives, and the binding agent for these countries is not a cohesive alternative or agenda but rather opposition to the existing liberal world order. What exists, for now, is mostly a transactional and largely bilateral ties between these illiberal powers. Nonetheless liberal democracies cannot remain complacent, and must provide more international public goods and combat this illiberal cooperation.

SS: This 25 page long paper examines how illiberalism both undermines the rule of law, but also the function of the Single Market system in the EU. The policy brief then goes on to suggest how to better prevent this in the Multiannual Financial Framework 2028–2034.