Élysée Palace Reception – Entente Cordiale Day 2026
The five French finalist teams of the 2025–2026 Entente Cordiale Day Challenge were received at the Élysée Palace to present their reports and recommendations on "Conflicts, Technologies, and World Security." The five teams represented EDHEC Business School, Les Jeunes IHEDN, Sciences Po, ESCP/Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and HEC Paris, addressing subjects including Arctic geopolitics, algorithmic disinformation, critical-mineral security and the changing relationship between technology and international conflict.
The reception took place under the auspices of Frédéric Rose, Directeur de Cabinet to the President of the French Republic, with the finalists given the opportunity to discuss both their proposals and their practical implementation. Among the projects presented was the winning EDHEC report, L'Arctique : le laboratoire géopolitique du futur, examining the Arctic as an emerging centre of geopolitical competition.
We are deeply grateful to the Élysée Palace and Frédéric Rose for welcoming the five finalist teams and for the attention given to their research and recommendations. There was a particular significance in seeing students whose work had been developed and defended in the academic setting of the Sorbonne brought into conversation with the French Presidency itself. The reception offered a fitting continuation of the Challenge's central ambition: to take rigorous student research beyond the university and into direct dialogue with those engaged in addressing the strategic questions it explores.
