Resilience
The future of Europe as seen by EU citizens
This report presents an analysis on the topic of resilience of the stories selected from the #OurFutures initiative. These stories — envisioning life in 2040 — provide unique insights into how people across the EU perceive Europe's capacity to remain resilient amid multiple transformative challenges.
This thematic analysis supports the European Commission’s 2025 Strategic Foresight Report on resilience. It therefore focuses on stories that explicitly reference the role and position of Europe, its institutions, and its collective future.
The report identifies eight major challenge areas shaping perceptions of Europe's resilience, with climate and democracy emerging as particularly cross-cutting themes. The analysis also explores the optimistic and pessimistic visions citizens express about Europe’s future – on the one hand those describing a Europe that has responded to its challenges through transformation, and on the other, those that foresee institutional collapse, authoritarian drift, climate catastrophe, and social fragmentation. Five key tensions structure the debates within the stories, revealing the difficult trade-offs that Europe must navigate to remain resilient. Potential shocks that citizens anticipate underscore where citizens feel Europe is most vulnerable and where resilience must be strengthened.
Despite their concerns, storytellers propose a wide range of concrete strategies to enhance European resilience, many of them emphasizing systemic reform and long-term thinking. The report synthesizes citizens’ views on Europe’s role in the world.
BOL Erica;
GORAN Petra;
DEPREZ Steff;
VAN GOOL MALDONADO Claudia;
2025-09-09
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC143071
978-92-68-31086-1 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 40423,
OP KJ-01-25-423-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC143071,
10.2760/8495633 (online),
Additional supporting files
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