Strategic Foresight in the EU: The Architecture of Tomorrow

Faced with relentless uncertainty on all sides, European leaders have been scrambling to find ways to prepare for the unexpected. Lurching from crisis to crisis, the continent appears ill-equipped to anticipate and prepare for significant events. Era-defining changes are occurring at an exponential rate, and being able to look to the future with greater certainty has become of the utmost importance. This is especially true for the EU, which has struggled to keep pace with today’s rapid succession of events, seemingly condemned to purely reactive responses.

In 2019, however, the European Commission embraced the practice of strategic foresight as an avenue through which to improve policymaking with the tools for long-term planning and crisis prevention. ‘Foresight studies’ include analytical techniques such as war gaming, horizon scanning and scenario approaches with the aim of bringing forward-looking techniques to bear on strategic decision-making. Scenario planning, in particular, has the potential to reduce uncertainty by identifying a range of plausible alternative futures, highlighting key drivers of change and embracing innovative thinking, which can reveal blind spots in mainstream policy agendas. Importantly, scenario exercises do not purport to act as a crystal ball, rather, according to futurist Peter Schwartz, they provide ‘stories about the way the world might turn out tomorrow, stories that can help us recognize and adapt to changing aspects of our present environment’.

Scenario planning shares its intellectual origins with ‘wargaming’ (or Kriegsspiel) from the nineteenth-century Prussian military training of officers in battlefield tactics through simulations. Structuring uncertainty and testing strategic decisions proved to be useful for laying the groundwork for anticipatory planning and later for informing US strategic culture during the early Cold War. Wartime operational planning carried out by the Department of Defence and the RAND corporation engaged extensively with nuclear planning scenario exercises, effectively wargaming all potential escalations, breakdowns in deterrence and worst-case contingencies in a bipolar era. Certain private sector companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell, integrated scenario exercises into its decision-making processes as early as the 1970s, in what was to become a benchmark for corporate planning and risk analysis.

With the return of intensified geopolitical rivalry, potential nuclear escalation and a breakdown in the liberal international order, there is a need to prepare for discontinuity, using techniques borrowed from the Cold War. Today, scenario planning crosses many domains – no longer circumscribed by its initial national security realm – including energy, economic security and even political ideology. This inherently demands political imagination and innovative ways of planning what comes next and how to connect means with ends – the core function of strategic thinking.

Institutional foresight and political restraint

Foresight has been gaining increased attention at the EU level, with considerable steps having been taken towards the institutionalization of foresight into policymaking cycles since the Commission’s initial embrace of it seven years ago. Indeed, since 2020, the Commission’s in-house science service – the Joint Research Centre (JRC) – has published an annual Strategic Foresight Report which sets out long-term planning for the Commission’s agenda setting and horizon scanning, and the identification of megatrends. Certain scenarios outlined in the JRC’s foresight reports have proven remarkably valuable. For example, the 2020 report highlighted the importance of securing greater resilience in supply chains months before the full economic aftershocks of COVID-19 were evident. The 2022 edition addressed the need to develop strategic autonomy in energy and raw materials to diversify away from over-reliance on dependencies. More recently, the reports have explored demographic decline, technological disruption and climate-related instability as structural drivers of long-term risk. Yet the simple fact that foresight analysis is carried out by the Union’s institutions does not guarantee that its findings will be implemented effectively. Indeed, Europe’s contemporary state of permacrisis suggests much the opposite. There are three main structural issues at play which limit the impact of foresight: its institutional placement, its scope and the political will to engage with it.

Firstly, since foresight is primarily situated within the JRC, a body designed for scientific support rather than geopolitical direction, it remains an analytical service. Moreover, foresight should be situated in a more strategic portfolio than within the remit of the Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport, which is not focused on foreign policy or crisis management. Foresight analysis does feed into consultations and communications within the Commission, but it is not systematically embedded in higher-stakes political decision-making, such as defence capability planning or industrial strategy. As a result it is disconnected from the political authority of the Council and member states.

Secondly, in terms of the scope and political boldness of EU foresight capacity, although the Foresight Reports identify megatrends such as ‘geopolitical fragmentation’, they often fall short of stress-testing extreme yet plausible contingencies. Within the Report’s analysis, the language remains cautious and tilted towards consensus building, rather than suggesting disruption of management or worst-case scenario planning. Importantly, economic, energy and food security or ideological confrontation are not apparent as drivers of change in the Foresight Reports.

Finally, political will and the uptake of strategic foresight are not always evident at the EU level. The failure to meaningfully prepare for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine illustrates the problem. Despite the intelligence warnings in late 2021, contingency planning on energy decoupling or ammunition stockpiles remained limited until the invasion occurred. Indeed, Europe’s longstanding dependence on Russian gas and vast underinvestment in the defence sector before the invasion had been consistently documented risks. These sudden shocks were the collective result of short-term optimization in a system that did not prioritize long-term strategic risk. Electoral cycles trumped generational planning and the Commission’s technocratic culture distorted geopolitical foresight.

Effective institutionalization of strategic foresight

Examples of effective foresight institutionalization exist at the national level in various EU member states. They offer models from which the EU could draw inspiration at the institutional level. Three key lessons stand out.

Firstly, foresight institutions require a degree of independence from the political establishment. This allows them to include uncomfortable scenarios that challenge the prevailing assumptions held by those in power. At the same time, maintaining a degree of proximity to the highest-level decision-makers remains invaluable for ensuring that foresight recommendations are implemented. Foresight ecosystems in countries such as Finland are exemplary. Indeed, Finland’s National Foresight Network is situated at the heart of government, coordinated by the Prime Minister's Office and by Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund. Sitra’s mandate is to ‘ensure the future well-being of Finland’ by ‘supporting and challenging’ government, and it often highlights issues that may not have reached the top of the government’s policy agenda. The fund benefits from significant independence when it comes to internal research programming and funding allocation and is heavily involved in the drafting of Finland’s flagship ‘Government Report on the Future’. Yet Finland’s foresight ecosystem also promotes buy-in from political parties across the spectrum by implicating the parliament in the formulation of these reports, which date back to the 1990s and are published every four years at the start of a new government.

Secondly, the positive impacts of foresight analyses on policymaking are often indirect and challenging to identify, which can reduce buy-in from senior decision-makers who may be sceptical of foresight methods. Ex-post evaluations which demonstrate the impact of foresight analyses are an important part of effective institutionalization. For example, Estonia’s Foresight Centre regularly carries out assessments of past foresight work, comparing actual progress to that envisioned by previous scenarios and outlooks. Similarly, Finland and Estonia both explicitly demonstrate the impact of foresight by monitoring its influence on political discussions and parliamentary debates.

Thirdly, the composition of foresight teams should be interdisciplinary and include a diverse range of participants in terms of their ethnicities, religions, genders, sexual orientations and age groups. The inclusion of a diverse set of stakeholders is an essential mechanism to minimize bias and foster robust insights informed by different areas of expertise. For instance, the Netherlands emphasizes a high degree of diversity in terms of disciplinary background in foresight teams, paying special attention to the inclusion of younger generations and people with an immigration background.

Scenario Exercises

To move from a state of chronic reactivity to one of anticipatory preparedness, the EU’s leaders must demonstrate greater political willingness to properly institutionalize foresight ecosystems and take full advantage of the innovative thinking inherent to this methodology. For instance, preparing a portfolio of policy responses to a range of the most plausible future events could grant the Union significant advantages by enabling it to act within the right timeframe. In addition, scenario exercises help decide how Europe’s strengths can be leveraged to shield it from intensifying geopolitical tensions. Indeed, scenario building stretches across both domestic and international domains.

Eurosceptic government planning

The first domain that requires far more systematic scenario engagement is the ideological and political sphere. While external threats receive a disproportionate amount of attention in strategic debates, the domestic transformation of a member state can cause uncertainties, which requires scenario planning. The rise of far-right Eurosceptic parties to power is a plausible scenario in several member states. This planning goes reaches beyond poll analysis into the more consequential questions for the EU’s trajectory. For instance, the 2027 French presidential election could bring the Rassemblement National to power, potentially reshaping the EU’s cohesion, integration processes – such as Ukraine’s accession – and the Union’s position in the world more broadly. The reported early departure of Christine Lagarde from the European Central Bank can be read as a form of EU-level contingency planning in anticipation of political disruptions in a core member state. As the prospect of a far-right victory in France looms, there is an impetus to shape key institutional appointments before electoral volatility reshapes the European Council.

By accelerating leadership transitions in institutions with long, fixed mandates and strong legal independence, the EU can effectively lock in policy continuity. This to some extent reduces the leverage of future Eurosceptic governments over core monetary and regulatory functions. This strategy does not necessarily eliminate political disruption, but it buys time, preserves institutional stability and tries to insulate the shocks of such scenarios in advance. By mapping the implications of nationalist governments in Paris, Rome or elsewhere, over the next few years European policymakers can better anticipate shifts and make contingency plans. Preparations for such scenarios force policymakers and leaders to confront how domestic political transformations within key states could reverberate across the continent and alter the internal balance of power within the Union.

Supply Chain vulnerabilities

Engagement with scenario exercises could also equip Europe with significant geoeconomic advantages in relation to Europe’s supply-chain strengths and vulnerabilities. A byproduct of globalization has been the rise of weaponized interdependence: the strategic exploitation of supply-chain chokepoints in global markets for purposes of political leverage or deterrence. Great powers such as China and the US have become highly adept at this strategy. Europe, which has championed free trade, not so much. However, as the international trade agreements of the liberal order rapidly lose their credibility, European leaders’ reluctance to entertain such strategies as a new means of protection against external economic coercion has repeatedly put the continent on the back foot. From Russia’s weaponization of gas sales to China’s restrictions on rare-earth magnet exports and American threats to cut off military support, Europe must urgently use scenario exercises to map out how it can leverage its own strengths¹ to develop a reciprocal strategy involving the weaponization of its own chokepoints.

A concrete example lies in semiconductor supply chains, where Dutch company ASML holds a monopoly over the manufacturing of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology, which is used to etch extremely fine, high-density circuits onto silicon wafers destined for cutting-edge chips in AI, smartphones and computers. While striving for absolute strategic autonomy in the sector is unrealistic, given fiscal limitations and industrial realities, a more viable strategy is for Europe to harness its current areas of technological expertise, such as EUVs, with the goal of becoming strategically indispensable to systemic rivals.

Importantly, Europe should not mistake the rise of weaponized interdependence for an excuse to entertain isolationist or protectionist logics. Indeed, ‘going it alone’ is neither a feasible nor a desirable strategy. Research that maps out Europe’s supply-chain strengths clearly states that the continent should amplify its power by banding together with like-minded partners such as Canada or Japan, helping to transform bilateral dependencies into a powerful form of systemic deterrence.

Conclusion

Uncertainty will continue to proliferate, as will the uncomfortable truths of current events. Strategic foresight enables policymakers to find a path out of the fog of ‘events politics’ and see beyond the horizon. For Europe, the institutionalization of future planning is an essential step towards cultivating a pan-European strategic culture. Foresight should become embedded in geopolitical strategy and connected to the highest levels of political authority. It is essential to identifying threats and opportunities, imagining how they might play out to inform better trade-offs.

Engaging with scenario exercises enhances the planning capacity of the EU and its member states in the medium to long term. Business, academia and think tanks also have a role to play in this transactional political environment as uncertainties multiply. Connecting forward-looking thinking across institutions and governments is in essence part of Europe’s intellectual rearmament.