The European Commission's 2025 Strategic Foresight Report presents 'Resilience 2.0', a forward-looking and proactive approach to ensuring the EU thrives in turbulent times, anticipates new challenges and creates a safe space for citizens and business.
The report recognises various megatrends: climate and environmental transitions are accelerating, security concerns are rising, and global competition is reshaping economies and societies. At the same time, Europe faces questions on its strategic autonomy, competitiveness, social cohesion and the protection of democracy and fundamental values.
The scale and complexity of the challenges ahead require policymakers to consider unfamiliar or even hard-to-imagine scenarios. The report makes foresight a standing feature of EU policymaking. From 2026, annual foresight reports will not just analyse trends but test how different future scenarios would affect Europe, and use those insights to shape policies across the board.
The 2025 report identifies eight areas of action where Europe can strengthen its resilience:
- Building a global vision for the EU as a strong, stable, and trusted home and worldwide partner;
- Amplifying internal and external security with a technology-savvy approach;
- Harnessing the power of technology and research to support prosperity and values;
- Strengthening long-term economic resilience to absorb shocks and sustain growth;
- Supporting sustainable and inclusive well-being as part of the European social model;
- Reimagining education and skills to prepare for technological and social change;
- Safeguarding democracy, media freedom, and social cohesion, while countering disinformation;
- Anticipating demographic transformation and promoting intergenerational fairness.
Taken together, these areas provide a framework for ensuring that Europe is prepared for the decades to come, while making the most of new opportunities.
Background
The European Commission is one of the globally leading public administrations using strategic foresight. Since 2020, the Commission has been publishing annual Strategic Foresight Reports. The 2025 edition, the first in this mandate, builds on recent Commission strategies and reports relevant to resilience insights from a public call for evidence, a participative process within the European Commission, consultations with EU institutional partners through the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System, the foresight network of the decentralised EU agencies, think tanks, and Member States through the EU-wide Foresight Network.
