Chris Kremidas-Courtney is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre, associate fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, and author of ‘The Rest of Your Life: Five Stories of Your Future.’
If Leonardo da Vinci walked the corridors of Brussels today, would he be celebrated as Europe’s greatest mind, or dismissed as an unfocused generalist? I suspect the latter.
The Brussels ecosystem is designed to reward specialisation, not breadth. Each Directorate-General has its silo, each think tank its niche, and each expert their lane. This makes for tidy panels and predictable briefings. But it suffocates the kind of cross-pollination of ideas that Europe’s myriad crises demand.
Just imagine how Leonardo would fare if he applied to the European Personnel Selection Office. Faced with multiple-choice tests and competency framework screening, he would likely fail before reaching the interview stage. His CV listing “anatomist, engineer, painter, cartographer, inventor” would be flagged as unfocused. In Brussels terms, he would be considered a poor fit for any office or directorate. The man who invented helicopters, conceptualised solar power, and painted the Mona Lisa would not even make the reserve list.
Da Vinci would be told to choose: “Are you a painter, an engineer, or a scientist? Climate or defence? Digital or health?” His polymath curiosity, the very quality that made him timeless, would be seen as dilution rather than genius. In a city where image often outweighs substance, he’d struggle without the right logo or cocktail circuit.
And yet the challenges Europe faces today are not siloed. They cut across domains, spill over borders, and defy neat boxes drawn by bureaucracies. Specialists can tell us what is happening inside their lanes, but they struggle to connect the lanes into a workable map. For that we need integrators.
Take Europe’s energy transition. It’s not simply a climate issue. It’s tied to industrial competitiveness, geopolitical exposure, regional energy partnerships, and even the stability of the EU’s neighbourhood. Narrow expertise explains carbon markets or pipeline capacity, but only cross-disciplinary thinking shows how the system holds together.
The same is true for AI governance. Regulators focus on rules for innovation and data protection, while defence ministries are interested in autonomous systems. But the deeper challenge is how AI transforms democracy, labour, and even cognitive self-determination. This is not a file for one DG or ministry; it demands a Da Vinci mindset to see the ethical, societal, and strategic dimensions all at once.
There is already a handful of such Da Vincis in Brussels – people who cross disciplines, connect unexpected dots, and resist being boxed in. They are often independent scholars, retired officials, or seasoned journalists with a broad enough perspective to understand the bigger picture.
But they are rarely amplified, precisely because the system is not built to reward synthesis. Instead, they are treated as curiosities on the margins. This is a mistake. If Europe is to survive an era of cascading crises, it must cultivate these few integrators as much as it does the specialists. They provide the connective tissue without which the EU cannot act coherently.
Europe’s history shows that innovation often comes not from the centre but from dynamic peripheries. The Renaissance flourished in city-states like Florence and Venice, which allowed cross-cutting thinkers to thrive.
That means giving space to voices that don’t fit neatly into one DG or program area. It means elevating thought leaders not just for their institutional affiliations, but for their ability to connect dots across disciplines and borders. It also means recognising the next breakthrough for Europe may come not from another narrowly defined expert panel in Brussels, but from those willing to think like Da Vinci across culture, science, law, and technology.
Da Vinci also thrived because he was willing to take risks. He imagined machines that could fly and tested theories that often failed before they succeeded. By contrast, Brussels often mistakes caution for wisdom, moving incrementally while the world outside moves at full speed. What Europe needs is not recklessness, but a Da Vincian willingness to sketch bold designs even if some fail. Without that risk-taking spirit, integration risks becoming preservation; managing decline rather than shaping the future.
Would Leonardo da Vinci survive in Brussels today? Perhaps not. But if Europe is to survive this century of cascading crises, we will need to cultivate his heirs; thinkers unafraid to embrace complexity, take risks, and to see the whole picture when everyone else is focused on fragments.
