Towards a systematic approach to nuclear physics

Chiral effective field theory (EFT) provides a systematic and controlled framework to study the dynamics of few-nucleon systems. It relies on the low-momentum expansion and allows to derive nuclear forces and current operators from the most general effective Lagrangian for pions, nucleons and external sources in harmony with (approximate) chiral symmetry of QCD. I will review the current status of research in this field and discuss applications to various problems in the few-nucleon sector including nucleon-nucleon, nucleon-deuteron and pion-deuteron scattering, properties of light nuclei and chiral extrapolations.