Fundamental Rights in an Uncertain Future: Strategic foresight for Europe 2040
This report explores how future changes could affect fundamental rights. It sets out ways to protect rights in the face of major transitions and helps institutions prepare before decisions become urgent. It is accompanied by practical guidance, ‘Embedding fundamental rights in foresight: A guide for practitioners’, designed to support practitioners integrate fundamental rights in foresight exercises.
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The foresight process was designed to explore how long-term developments may affect the protection and enforcement of fundamental rights in Europe by 2040. It did not seek to predict a single future. Instead, it explored different possible futures to test how rights, legal safeguards and institutions might operate under changing technological, environmental, economic, democratic and security conditions.
The process was informed by FRA’s guidance on embedding fundamental rights in strategic foresight, which identifies six mutually reinforcing principles:
- legality;
- relevance;
- participation;
- equality and non-discrimination;
- reliability;
- transparency and accountability.
The process also took account of existing legal obligations under international human rights law, the EU treaties, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and relevant EU law.
Evidence gathering and analysis were combined with broad expert participation and consultation. During 2025, more than 140 representatives of EU institutions and agencies, international organisations, national authorities, human rights bodies and civil society organisations and academics, foresight practitioners and human rights experts contributed their expertise across four in-person workshops. This brought legal and policy expertise together with practical experience and perspectives on how future developments may affect different groups and rights. This report is FRA’s analytical synthesis of this collective and exploratory process. The findings presented here should not be attributed to individual participants.
The process unfolded in five stages. First, horizon scanning examined developments across social, technological, economic, ecological, political, legal and values-related domains. This led to the identification of factors of change and wildcards that could affect fundamental rights over time. Horizon scanning is a systematic process for identifying emerging developments that may shape the future. Wildcards are low-probability but high-impact events that could significantly alter future trajectories.
Second, these inputs informed the development of exploratory scenarios for Europe in 2040 (see Box: Exploratory scenarios for fundamental rights in Europe in 2040). The scenarios built on the reference foresight scenarios on the global standing of the EU in 2040 developed by the EU Policy Lab at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and enriched them with a fundamental rights perspective. This entailed applying a fundamental rights lens to questions of geopolitical change, institutional capacity, social cohesion, technological transformation and crisis preparedness.
Third, participants used the scenarios to develop desirable futures for a rights-based Europe in 2040. These futures focused on six areas high on the EU agenda: environmental protection, the economy, digital transformation, preparedness and security, democratic resilience and the governance of human rights.
Fourth, participants identified pathways that could support the realisation of these rights-based futures by 2040. These pathways translate into possible strategic policy choices that could be made today to strengthen the implementation and enforcement of rights, reinforce institutional capacity and address emerging risks before they become entrenched.
Fifth, the pathways were stress-tested against disruptive developments and changing conditions, including climate shocks, technological failures, geopolitical instability, democratic strain and emergency governance. This exposed assumptions and weaknesses in the pathways, which, in turn, helped in identifying approaches that would remain robust under conditions of uncertainty.
This report’s structure reflects the methodology applied: Section 1 depicts one possible Europe in 2040. Section 2 examines the potential implications of societal changes for the protection of fundamental rights. Section 3 suggests pathways for a rights-based future for Europe in 2040. The inclusion of links to initiatives, tools and external web pages in this report does not imply endorsement by FRA.
