The Munich Security Conference has been a news-making forum for decades – a place where world leaders meet other politicians, as well as journalists and civil society groups, to discuss the biggest issues facing the planet.
In recent years, it has been the site of seismic speeches that redefine the shape of global politics. From a public spat between Nato allies over Iraq in 2003, to Vladimir Putin’s 2007 address that signalled the start of a new cold war, to JD Vance’s blistering attack on European nations in 2025, each moment had an impact that echoed long after the weekend came to a close.
As the dust settles on this year’s event, here are some questions emerging from the conference:
Will Europe ‘wake up’ to a changing world?
After European leaders were left stunned by the US vice-president’s assault on their values in 2025, many came into this year’s conference with a sense of urgency. In the days before the meeting, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said “this must be the moment of awakening. It is time for Europe to wake up.”
Macron and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, gave speeches at the conference that sought to map a new, independent path for European powers, while striving to maintain the alliance with Washington. Both leaders announced that they had begun talks on a European nuclear deterrent.
On Saturday, the UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, made the case for a closer defence relationship with Europe, saying his country was “not the Britain of the Brexit years”.
After calling Europe a “sleeping giant”, Starmer went on to stress that a closer UK-EU defence relationship did not imply any weakening of the UK-US relationship, or of Nato.
Can the US and Europe remain united?
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, struck a more conciliatory tone than that of Vance in 2025 when he took the stage on Saturday.
“[The US is] deeply tied to Europe, and our futures have always been linked and will continue to be,” he said.
Outlining how the US under Trump was intent on building a new world order, Rubio said: “We are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, [but] it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe”.
He made the speech a day after a YouGov poll showed that among the six largest European countries favourability towards the US was at its lowest point since tracking began a decade ago.
“A rift has opened up between Europe and the United States,” Merz said in his speech on Friday.
“The culture war of the Maga movement is not ours. Freedom of speech ends here with us when that speech goes against human dignity and the constitution. We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade,” the German chancellor said, drawing applause.
The EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, condemned “fashionable euro-bashing” by the US, saying: “When I travel around the world, I see countries that look up to us because we represent values that are still highly regarded.”
Does Trump still want Greenland?
The Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, and her counterpart in Greenland, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, held a 15-minute meeting with Rubio on the sidelines of the conference on Friday, which Frederiksen described as “constructive”.
A day later though, she told a panel discussion on Arctic security that she believed Trump still desires to own Greenland, despite dialling back his recent threats to seize it by force.
“Everybody asks us, do we think it’s over? I mean, no, we don’t think it’s over,” Frederiksen said.
A US-Denmark-Greenland working group has been established to discuss Washington’s security concerns in the Arctic, but Frederiksen and Nielsen used their appearance on Saturday to say the pressure on the island’s people had been “unacceptable”.
Is peace in Ukraine any closer?
Rubio skipped a Ukraine-focused meeting with European leaders on Friday, and said little in his speech about the conflict with Russia. However, he found time to meet Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the conference.
The US is set to host a trilateral meeting between the two warring sides on Tuesday, but in his speech at the conference Zelenskyy said that Ukraine was doing “everything” to end the war, insisting that viable security guarantees were the only way to get to a deal.
“The Americans often return to the topic of concessions, and too often those concessions are discussed in the context only of Ukraine,” he said.
He said that Kyiv needed security guarantees for a minimum of 20 years from the US before it could sign a peace deal with dignity, and also called for a clear date for Ukraine to be allowed to join the EU.
Which future Democratic hopefuls were there?
Throughout the years, the Munich Security Conference has become a staging ground for future presidential nominees and a chance for them to burnish their foreign policy credentials.
This year, prominent Democrats rolled into Munich with the message that European leaders must stand up to Trump. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom; the Arizona senator Ruben Gallego, and the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, were all in attendance, but it was the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that received the most attention, with speculation that her presence might indicate a possible run for the White House in 2028.
Outlining what she called an “alternative vision” for a leftwing US foreign policy, Ocasio-Cortez accused Trump of tearing apart the transatlantic alliance and of seeking to introduce an “age of authoritarianism”.
When asked whether the Democratic party’s next presidential nominee should reconsider the country’s military aid to Israel, Ocasio-Cortez said that “the idea of completely unconditional aid no matter what one does, does not make sense”.
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