This is the final report from a foresight study that aimed at supporting the development of the Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe (2025-2027). The study lasted for 18 months and involved a wide range of activities that this report aims at presenting.

These activities aimed at providing early-stage strategic intelligence and sense-making contributions – issues, trends, perspectives, ideas - that could contribute novel elements to the more structured processes of strategic planning that were to follow. The work followed two important directions that were recommended by EFFLA (2012)1 as core elements of bringing foresight into EU R&I policy: knowledge-based review and broad engagement.

Knowledge based review was conducted with the help of the 40 experts who constituted the team that worked on the project. All these experts have contributed as authors to the authorship of the different chapters of this report. About 300 additional experts contributed to the project through its numerous workshops that helped shape the scenarios and ideas about their policy implications, and through membership in the on-line platform of the project at www.futures4europe.eu, which reached 307 people. Last, we acknowledge the 943 experts who responded to our final consultation survey on the implications of our foresight for the directions of EU R&I policy.

The foresight process
The foresight process in support of the 2nd Strategic Plan comprised a wide spectrum of activities:
• As a reference point for the exploratory work, the explicit and implicit impact assumptions of the 1st Strategic Plan were identified and visualised with the help of a qualitative system analysis and modelling tool for causal loop analysis.
• An exploratory analysis of forward-looking sources (e.g. foresight reports, web-based horizon scanning) was conducted to identify relevant trends and signals of unexpected developments. These were discussed in online workshops and on www.futures4europe.eu.
• An outlook on emerging developments in the global and European context of EU R&I policy was developed drawing on a major online workshop in autumn 2021 with some 60 participants, experts and policy makers, who worked with multi-level context scenarios and specific context narratives about emerging disruptions.
• On that basis and in close consultation with the European Commission involving another major workshop in February 2022 which brought together 80 participants, Expert Teams were set up to develop disruptive scenarios in five areas of major interest. Each team ran several internal workshops but also involved further experts and Commission staff in their work, both through the online platform and through a final policy-oriented workshop. The foresight work within the areas of interest resulted in five deep dives on the following topics:
> Climate change, Research, and Innovation: Radical Options from Social Change to Geoengineering
> Hydrogen Economy – A radical alternative
> The EU in a Volatile New World - The challenge of global leadership
> Global Commons
> Transhumanist Revolutions
• Further areas of interest identified since were explored through review papers aiming to capture major trends, developments and scenario sketches in relation to further disruptive developments
> Social Confrontations
> Artificial General Intelligence: Issues and Opportunities
> The Interpenetration of Criminal and Lawful Economic Activities
> The Future of Health
• A third major workshop took place in October 2022 bringing together all the thematic strands of work and addressing possible R&I policy implications from this work. Participation in this workshop reached 250 individuals over 2 days.
• Building on the workshop, the online Dynamic Argumentative Delphi survey Research4Futures collect suggestions from further experts and citizens about the implications of this foresight work for the priorities of EU R&I policy.

This foresight study has been the most widely engaging foresight exercise yet aiming to support EU R&I policy. Through this broad engagement, the study did not only develop intelligence for the 2nd Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe but also contributed to the development of an EU R&I foresight community, one that is an asset for future R&I policies across Europe. 

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Background

An increasingly volatile global geopolitical context is emerging with growing threats not only to global security and governance but also to the EU and neighbourhood countries. Developments in the world and NATO point to Europe’s vulnerability – one that has long been explained, but had yet to be taken seriously. The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought home the realization that the world system is at a crossroads. Talk of multi-polarity, turbulence and possible configurations of the global system has combined with the concern about the future actorness of the EU, or as the 2021 Strategic Foresight Report of the European Commission puts it: “the EU’s capacity and freedom to act”.

If new international blocks and confrontations emerge, this disruption might even go beyond Europe, threatening traditional values, as well as lives and material prosperity of many. While the sudden changes are pushing the EU to reassess its defense capabilities and take a military stance by providing weapons to Ukraine, they must also be seen against the backdrop of an accelerating climate crisis. Impacts of climate change are a direct threat to many regions in the EU, but they also put indirect pressure on migration and the economy. As the war is fueling climate change drivers, many Europeans are torn between contradictory moods: indifference and solidarity, fragmentation and cohesion, empowerment and desperation.

A important driver affecting the EU’s capacity to act is the US foreign policy. Will the US maintain its military influence in Europe, delivering weapons, personnel, and intelligence, as well as pursuing its interests in Eastern Europe or will it take a post-hegemonic position, withdrawing from the continent and leaving conflict resolution up to the EU and the rest of NATO? Such geopolitical reconfigurations are closely entangled with the domestic developments in the US. The EU’s dependence on the transatlantic partnership and NATO is both a source of strength and weakness. As the recent period has shown, an un-cooperative US President and an ambivalent US-China relationship might put the US in a position of dictating terms to the EU in the context of major geopolitical upheaval and reconfigurations, where the rise of new regional powers and the emergence of new actors create uncertainty about future coalitions.

However, the EU is vulnerable along several further dimensions: from access to resources to insufficient capabilities in key technologies including military technologies and dependence on the US for military deterrence, as well as on China for some basic communication technologies. The EU is faced with the urgency of reducing its economic and technological dependencies but the situation remains
delicate in the view of possible shifts in the US government policies and continued dependence on natural resources from other parts of the world. In taking on a more ethical global stance, the EU opens itself up to criticism about double standards and inconsistencies in its policy narratives.

There are already efforts underway to improve the preparedness and make the EU more ‘futureproof’, for instance by anticipating consequences of, and testing responses to, possible shocks and crises. While the EU is frequently assumed to be in a position to claim technological leadership, the arising key question is whether it will rethink its investment focus towards specific dual-use technologies, thus creating capabilities and becoming competitive in the domain of military technologies and industry.

These (and other) uncertainties feed the fear of the future and gives rise to the new geo-political realism: weaponization of everything, increased budgets for deterrence and budget cuts on sociopolitical matters. Accompanying energy shortages and reversing climate neutral energy policies are contributing to the looming economic crisis and societal fragmentation. A central question of the
near and long-term future is: what will the geopolitical power distribution look like?

This report sketches some alternative scenarios of how the geopolitical reconfiguration might evolve in the coming 15 to 20 years. It is based on the work of a team of experts, covering different aspects of geopolitical reconfigurations and future challenges for the EU’s positioning. Next to individual papers as inputs to this report, several virtual and one in-person workshop were organised for further developing and consolidation of the main drivers as well as for developing diverging scenarios on the future of geopolitics and the role of the EU. Additional experts were included in the work as well and consulted to give feedback. A dedicated workshop with EU foresight experts from the Commission services and the member states, helped to provide important insights to complete the scenario development and outline some key policy options.

This foresight study aimed at supporting the development of the Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe (2025-2027), by providing early-stage strategic intelligence and sense-making that could contribute novel elements to the processes of strategic planning.

The study, which was launched in mid-2021 and lasted almost two years, has been the most widely engaging foresight exercise yet aiming to support EU R&I policy. Through this broad engagement, the study did not only develop intelligence for the 2nd Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe but also contributed to the development of an EU R&I foresight community hosted by futures4europe.eu, one that is an asset for future R&I policies across Europe.

The foresight process in support of the 2nd Strategic Plan comprised a wide spectrum of activities:

• As a reference point for the exploratory work, the explicit and implicit impact assumptions of the 1st Strategic Plan were identified and visualised with the help of a qualitative system analysis and modelling tool for causal loop analysis.
• An exploratory analysis of forward-looking sources (e.g. foresight reports, web-based horizon scanning) was conducted to identify relevant trends and signals of unexpected developments. These were discussed in online workshops and on futures4europe.eu.
• An outlook on emerging developments in the global and European context of EU R&I policy was developed drawing on a major online workshop in autumn 2021 with some 60 participants, experts and policy makers, who worked with multi-level context scenarios and specific context narratives about emerging disruptions.
• On that basis and in close consultation with the European Commission involving another major workshop in February 2022 which brought together 80 participants, Expert Teams were set up to develop disruptive scenarios in five areas of major interest. Each team ran several internal workshops but also involved further experts and Commission staff in their work, both through the online platform and through a final policy-oriented workshop. The foresight work within the five areas of interest resulted in deep dives on the following topics:
  > Climate change, Research, and Innovation: Radical Options from Social Change to Geoengineering
  > Hydrogen Economy – A radical alternative
  > The EU in a Volatile New World - The challenge of global leadership
  > Global Commons
  > Transhumanist Revolutions
  
• Further areas of interest identified were explored through review papers aiming to capture major trends, developments and scenario sketches in relation to further disruptive developments:
  > Social Confrontations
  > Artificial General Intelligence: Issues and Opportunities
  > The Interpenetration of Criminal and Lawful Economic Activities
  > The Future of Health
  
• A third major workshop took place in October 2022 bringing together all the thematic strands of work and addressing possible R&I policy implications from this work. Participation in this workshop reached 250 individuals over 2 days.
• Building on the workshop, the online Dynamic Argumentative Delphi survey Research4Futures collected suggestions from almost 950 contributors from Europe and beyond about the implications of this foresight work for the priorities of EU R&I policy.

The detailed description of the foresight work and the resulting outputs are available in the final report of the project.

This foresight study has been implemented through the Foresight on Demand framework contract, by a team of 40 experts. About 300 additional experts contributed to the project through its numerous workshops that helped shape the scenarios and their policy implications. 

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The Reference Foresight Scenarios report from the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) summarizes the results of a foresight process that started at the end of 2020 with the goal to develop a set of reference foresight scenarios to support policymakers. Foresight scenarios are a tool to improve strategy development and decision making in a context of turbulence, uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity. Recent events, such as the COVID pandemic or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, made clear that being prepared for the unknown and unexpected becomes increasingly important. 

The reference scenarios presented in this report aim to help decision makers to increase the preparedness of their organisations under increasingly unpredictable circumstances. The scenarios are four plausible versions of how the world may look like in 2040 and what this would mean for Europe’s global standing. They are called Storms, End game, Struggling synergies, and Opposing views. They do not claim to predict or project how the future may look like but offer strategic reflections, which can serve as a compass for policymakers for navigating through unchartered territories of turbulence, uncertainty, ambiguity and novelty. These four geopolitical scenarios are called ‘Reference’ Foresight Scenarios because they represent a forward-looking framework that provides a reference for use in policymakers’ debates about potential futures.

Stress-testing policy options with the scenarios

The work with the reference foresight scenarios continued as a pilot process of stress-testing some policy options against a set of Reference foresight scenarios. The process was led by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and applied to a specific EU policy proposal on Standard Essential Patents. The process ran during the initial stage of the impact assessment process, but it was not an official part of it. The results of this pilot helped to understand which policy options are more or less robust and how they can be made more future-proof. The process also provided rich insights into what the challenges and opportunities of this approach are, and into how stress-testing can be further incorporated into EU policymaking. The report provides an example and serve as a guide for any future process of stress-testing policy options against foresight scenarios.

What types of EU R&I policies would be effective in the years to come? How shall these policies help us explore and respond to the uncertainties of the future?
Finding answers to these questions requires first of all imagining the context, in which future EU R&I policies might be situated. For doing this, we need to explore developments both at global level and within the European Union.

4CF The Futures Literacy Company is a consultancy entirely focused on strategic foresight and long-term strategies. For nearly two decades, 4CF has been on the mission to help its clients prepare for an uncertain tomorrow. The Company has executed hundreds of projects for private companies, public institutions and international entities, including the European Commission and its agencies (EUDA, ENISA), FAO, UNFCCC, UNESCO, UNEP and UNDP. 4CF is at the forefront of global innovation, and actively contributes to the development of cutting-edge foresight tools, including 4CF HalnyX (Delphi platform), 4CF Sprawlr, 4CF FLEx.

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