By Philip von Brockdorff

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) welcomes the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report: Resilience 2.0, but we believe that future foresight reports would be more relevant if they also addressed external radical disruptions, the EU’s innovation gaps, internal institutional challenges and the costs of delaying EU enlargement.

The EESC is uniquely positioned to detect weak signals and underlying trends in strategic foresight. Through a permanent and structured mechanism, the EESC could contribute to the Commission’s strategic foresight cycle at all stages, rather than only at the end. To strengthen the strategic foresight process, the EESC also advocates the systematic use of multiple, divergent scenarios to stress-test existing or proposed strategies. 

Strategic foresight should primarily support sustainable and inclusive well-being as part of the European social model, with a focus on the European Pillar of Social Rights and intergenerational fairness. At the same time, it should take into account the current fragmentation of European capital markets, which severely constrains the efficient flow of capital to firms of all sizes, limiting innovation for SMEs and microenterprises. The EESC considers the completion of the Savings and Investments Union to be a central pillar of the EU’s resilience strategy, and this should feature prominently in the process. Equally, greater recognition of the role of entrepreneurship, SMEs and microenterprises is essential.

Future strategic foresight reports should also examine whether certain regulatory approaches unintentionally undermine the competitiveness of European companies and innovators compared with third-country operators, or whether they incentivise the relocation of innovation outside Europe. In this context, we must explicitly acknowledge that the EU is falling behind global competitors in certain areas of technological innovation, with all the consequences this entails. Similarly, we need to adequately address the risks for the EU if it fails to develop and scale these technologies.

A more thorough reflection on labour migration driven by demographic change would also be relevant, particularly in light of the projected decline in the EU's working-age population by 2040. 

With regard to environmental considerations, the EESC calls for strategic foresight to integrate a specific analysis of the triple planetary crisis into the report, by developing dedicated chapters on climate, biodiversity and pollution, across short-, medium- and long-term scenarios.

Finally, the EU could benefit from a joint foresight exercise aimed at developing strategic visions for future reports that are embraced by all EU institutions. Such an approach would help align strategic priorities and commit EU institutions to a shared long-term vision, rather than allowing parallel or competing strategic narratives to emerge.