The EESC welcomes the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report: Resilience 2.0, while underlining that future reports should also address radical disruptions. The EESC is uniquely placed to detect weak signals and underlying trends in strategic foresight and therefore its foresight-driven viewpoint should continuously feed into the Commission’s policy cycle. The EESC also calls for common, verifiable EU-wide metrics for socio-economic and institutional resilience. In this regard, the EESC is of the view that strategic foresight should also support sustainable and inclusive well-being as part of the European social model.
The debate on new own resources should evolve beyond technical adjustments and become a strategic reflection on how to strengthen the EU’s financial autonomy, cohesion and competitiveness. The EESC encourages the European Commission to further refine the overall design of the proposed own-resources package to make it ambitious, balanced and future-oriented.
The EESC warns that a weak long-term EU budget would undermine competitiveness, cohesion, agriculture and democracy. The Committee calls for a stronger, fairer and future-proof multiannual financial framework (MFF) for 2028 to 2034.
In this opinion, the EESC fully supports the priorities identified by the Commission and reiterates the need for a cohesive European response. The EESC also stresses that removing barriers is key and that regulatory simplification must take place with full respect for social and workers’ rights. Finally, it calls on the Commission to put forward legislative proposals to address regional supply constraints.
The EESC emphasises that peace must remain a core EU priority and cautions against focusing solely on military threats while overlooking other serious risks to human life. It stresses the importance of diplomacy for conflict resolution and crisis prevention wherever possible.The EESC supports a comprehensive, inclusive European defence strategy that supplements military readiness with civil preparedness. It endorses the European Commission’s Joint white Paper for European Defence – Readiness 2030 and calls for a coordinated EU approach that treats defence, peace and security as shared public goods, underpinned by strong legal, institutional and financial frameworks with democratic oversight.
The EESC expresses concerns over rising geopolitical risks, unstable trade dynamics, and the investment deficit in Europe, stressing the need to strengthen EU competitiveness and enhance defence capabilities. The Committee also believes that it is necessary to adopt a set of measures to strengthen investment by ensuring the implementation of all Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) funds, with the new targets and, if necessary, deploying unused funds for new investment programmes in European public goods, creating a European Fund for Strategic Investment, strengthening the EIB's lending capacity to expand InvestEU and exploring the possibility of using European Stability Mechanism funds.
The EESC welcomes the overall positive trade balance of the EU and calls for measures to maintain it, while recommending targeted support for strategically important industries, stronger investment conditions, and effective financing through the Single Market, the Savings and Investments Union, and a more integrated capital market. The EESC also underlines the need to support ambitious companies entering global markets, ensure opportunities for highly skilled professionals, simplify procedures without undermining social and environmental standards, create fiscal space for growth-enhancing investments, and strengthen multilateralism through new trade agreements and WTO reforms.
