This is the fourth ESPAS (European Strategy and Policy Analysis System) global trends report since the establishment of this inter-institutional EU foresight process in the early 2010s. As on previous occasions, it is being published in a year when the European Union embarks on a new five-year institutional cycle. The report analyses the key global trends towards the year 2040 and their possible impact on the Union, and sets out some strategic choices and questions that Europe's leaders may need to address in the coming five years and beyond. The report is the product of a unique collaborative process over the past year involving officials from across the nine ESPAS institutions and bodies.

The report sets the centrality of geopolitics as a transversal trend, given the on-going shift from an era of cooperation to an era of competition as well as the deepening fragmentation of the international system and the acceleration of major global transitions. The Report highlights how the borders between EU internal policy and external policy are blurring nowadays and will probably blur even more in the future. The primacy of geopolitics is outlined across the various trends identified in the report: from the economic challenges to demography, from the environmental and climate crisis to the energy transition, from the quest for equality to the technological acceleration, and including health, democracy and the broader changes on how we live.

The publication concludes by outlining the strategic imperatives for the incoming EU leadership. It calls for a multifaceted approach to establish the EU as a smart global power, ensure a socially equitable green transition, navigate economic risks, update the economic model, innovate within a balanced regulatory framework, and strengthen social cohesion.

Between now and 2040, Europe and the world will undergo profound geopolitical, economic, technological and social change. The generation now growing up will live in a world that we can only imagine. However, integrating long-term goals into short to medium-term decision-making can boost our chances of leaving a world that is in better shape to the next generation. The more we understand the challenges ahead, the better we can anticipate and prepare for the changes to come. There are grounds for optimism. The EU has arguably been able to make progress in the past precisely when the challenges seemed overwhelming. When pressed, it can marshal reserves of determination and ingenuity. The next EU leadership will need to draw deeply on these reserves in the years ahead.

Source: EEAS Global Trends to 2040: Choosing Europe’s Future

The latest report of the ESPAS network, Choosing Europe’s Future, analyses global trends in order to identify key strategic challenges for the EU as the next legislative cycle begins. It is the fruit of collaboration between nine EU institutions and bodies. Key takeaways include the importance of being able to act quickly, given that game-changing developments can happen suddenly. It notes the risk of false economies; in areas such as defence and security, for example, efforts to avoid costs now can mean far greater costs in the future. The report points to the importance of threat multipliers and gain multipliers. Action to mitigate social fragmentation can prevent knock-on effects in other domains; the development of effective clean technologies can bring dividends across the board.

Think Tank European Parliament - Research - Advanced search - Choosing Europe's future: The 2024 ESPAS report

Following the publishing of the Fourth Global Trends ESPAS report in April 2024, Futures4Europe had the pleasure of interviewing the editor and two co-authors of the report about their reflections and key trend insights throughout the foresight research and writing process. ESPAS, or the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System, unites nine EU institutions and bodies to collaboratively identify and analyze medium- and long-term trends affecting the EU, informing policy-makers about their implications.

The ongoing inter-institutional European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) Horizon Scanning activity is led since 2022 by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and the European Parliamentary Research Services. An iterative methodology is rolled out at three successive levels, involving experts in a variety of policy areas and across several EU institutions.

Firstly, at the outset, this exercise builds a wider EU community engaged in horizon scanning. Their task at a first level has involved looking for future developments that sit at the margins of current thinking and planning, the so-called ‘signs of new’.

Secondly, sense-making workshops are organised on a monthly basis to consider through new lenses the identified ‘signs of new’ collected over the month and find links and interconnections among them across policies and sectors. The aim of these second-level workshops is thus to imagine possible impactful future developments, ‘signals of change’, using the collected signs as prompts.

Thirdly, future impact workshops, conceived as exploratory and prioritisation workshops are organised after conducting a few sense-making workshops. These workshops also include the participation of officials across all ESPAS institutions and aim to prioritise the three potentially most impactful ‘signals of change’ from among those identified at an earlier stage.
This careful process results in Horizon Scanning newsletters providing a broader perspective on policy making.

Read the latest newsletters here: Horizon Scanning | ESPAS

See also blog post describing the project and its role in EU : Spotting the Future: How Horizon Scanning can help shape EU Policy - European Commission (europa.eu) 

ESPAS Horizon Scanning feeds to other ESPAS projects. Read the Global Trends Reports published every five years.

Partners:

European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC)
European Parliamentary Research Services (EPRS)