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.