Strategic Foresight Report 2025

The EESC Youth Test  has been applied to this opinion. The opinion was chosen by a group of interested youth organisations to present their collective views during the opinion-making process.

Key points

The EESC:

• welcomes the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report but considers its analytical approach too closely aligned with current political trajectories, limiting its value for long‑term strategic preparedness;
• stresses that future foresight reports must address radical disruptions, including non-linear developments, EU innovation gaps and internal institutional challenges, and evaluate the costs of non‑enlargement in an increasingly security‑driven global context;
• calls for the systematic use of multiple, divergent scenarios to stress‑test strategies and policy assumptions, supported by a transparent methodology;
• recommends establishing common, verifiable EU‑wide metrics for socio‑economic and institutional resilience, supporting sustainable well‑being as part of the European social model, with explicit reference to the European Pillar of Social Rights;
• urges the Commission to address the fragmentation of EU capital markets, which restricts the efficient flow of capital to firms of all sizes, and strongly supports the rapid completion of the Savings and Investments Union as a core component of EU resilience strategy;
• calls for greater recognition of entrepreneurship, SMEs and micro‑enterprises, recognising their essential contribution to employment and regional stability, and for the application of foresight to outline specific pathways to close innovation gaps;
• recommends that foresight exercises include specific, stress‑tested analyses of labour migration as a fundamental economic necessity given projected declines in the working‑age population, and calls for rigorous foresight work on social resilience and integration capacity;
• calls for a more detailed foresight‑based assessment of the triple planetary crisis and recommends dedicated chapters on climate, biodiversity and pollution, incorporating short‑, medium‑ and long‑term scenarios;
• considers it is uniquely placed to detect weak signals and calls for a permanent, structured mechanism to continuously feed the Commission's foresight work, coupled with a joint foresight exercise to develop strategic visions embraced by all EU institutions.

For more information, please contact INT secretariat.