Resilience in a shifting world: inside the ‘safari’ of the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report

When the first Strategic Foresight Report came out in 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic, it felt like we had reached peak turbulence and uncertainty. Resilience, seen through the anticipatory lens of foresight, seemed like the best remedy. Five years later, in the context of a worsening climate crisis, armed conflict and a volatile world order, the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report focused on Resilience 2.0 - offering the EU a compass for navigating uncertainty while building long-term resilience and wellbeing.  

In this post, we are highlighting what informed this report and what its innovative foresight process offers policymakers at every governance level.  

Join us on a foresight safari 

The “foresight safari” that helped shape the 2025 report involved a workshop and a series of consultations drawing together more than 50 participants from 34 different Commission services and EU institutions, Member State representatives, and broader stakeholders. Far from a theoretical exercise, this process encouraged open debate about vulnerabilities, emerging risks, and opportunities for the EU.  

If the global pandemic taught the EU anything, it is that the world is irreversibly “post-normal.” In this landscape, the stakes are high and decisions are urgent. The 2025 foresight team adopted the tools of “post-normal science”, using creative uncertainty mapping and participatory methods to shine a light on challenges too complex for traditional analysis.  

While many are familiar with the concept of black swans - an unpredictable, exceptional, disruptive event, it may come as a surprise that there are more animals in the foresight menagerie! For this process, we also brought in black elephants - an expression used to designate well known, but often ignored problems, such as climate change and black jellyfish. In the process leading to the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report, we therefore encouraged participants to consider not just familiar risks, but also black jellyfish: events that appear benign in isolation, but may suddenly escalate, disrupting systems in surprising ways. Think of vaccine sceptics: a few isolated cases do not pose a threat to public health, but a large number of them risk bringing back illnesses we considered extinct! We argued that considering those jellyfish, quietly multiplying beneath the surface, is essential for building long-term resilience. 

A map of emerging risks 

The workshop’s structure guided participants through three main steps: categorising risks, exploring underlying causes, and identifying “leverage points” for resilience.  

Using a carefully curated set of more than fifty risks and vulnerabilities affecting EU resilience, participants were asked to classify them into a “foresight safari” of black swans, elephants and jellyfish .  

Black jellyfish risks included the erosion of shared EU identity and values, the rise of extreme ideologies amplified by social media, new alliances based on divisions other than democracy, the proliferation of disruptive technologies and deteriorating mental health dividing communities.   

Among the most urgent black elephant risks identified were: 

• The triple planetary crisis: climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution
• Diminishing EU role in global governance
• Challenges to transatlantic relations
• Demographic trends shaping the labour market
• Data security and growing dependence on digital technology
• Accelerating brain drain from the EU 

Black swans include novel threats like bioterrorism, military conflict on EU soil, and new migration waves that could be politically exploited. But black swans can also result in for positive surprises, such as a “brain gain” for the EU resulting from talent inflows. 

Systemic challenges and deep divides 

What drives the multiplication of risk within the EU? The analysis pointed to a constellation of underlying issues: growing social polarisation, fragmentation, difficulties in migration and integration, democratic erosion, tech innovation racing ahead of regulation, and persistent inequalities. Geopolitical tensions, generational divides, and cultural gaps further complicate the picture.  

At the same time, several factors offer hope:  

• The need for a new narrative for the EU (with an external dimension and shared projects) is vital: something the 2026 Strategic Foresight Report will address 

• Education and critical thinking, inclusive governance, renewed multilateralism, ethical tech regulation, and building trust and transparency can help slow the growth of vulnerabilities.  

• Social cohesion, intergenerational fairness, and respect for diversity are all needed to underpin resilience. 

Building long-term resilience: the way forward 

The report crystallises several key areas of action for strengthening the EU’s ability to adapt and thrive: 

• Developing a coherent global vision for the EU, marking it as a credible, responsible global partner.
• Supporting sustainable and inclusive wellbeing through a just transition to a clean economy.
• Amplifying internal and external security, with a technology approach leveraging civil-military synergies.
• Reimagining education—harnessing the power of future-oriented social policies and reform.
• Harnessing technology and research, leading in science-based global governance and instating guardrails for emerging high-impact technologies.
• Strengthening democracy as a common good by countering polarisation and fostering democratic standards.
• Enhancing economic resilience for inclusive growth.
• Promoting intergenerational fairness, ensuring that decisions consider the needs and rights of future Europeans.  

From foresight to action 

The foresight safari, with its elephants, swans and jellyfish, behind the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report provides a framework for thinking about future risks and opportunities. Resilience becomes therefore more than a goal, but a method for approaching complexity.  

Europe’s future will be determined not by single events, but by the quality of its networks, the wisdom of its choices, and its ability to learn from disruption. The 2025 Strategic Foresight Report is an invitation to think boldly, act decisively, and build resilience from the inside out for a Europe that is more inclusive, more sustainable, and more responsive to all its citizens. 

Read the full report here: 2025 Strategic Foresight Report