Fundamental Rights in an Uncertain Future: Strategic foresight for Europe 2040

Fundamental rights are binding legal obligations that apply to public decision-making. Integrating them into decision-making processes from the outset helps ensure that legislation, policies, budgets and programmes comply with those obligations and that rights remain protected during implementation and review. Doing so can also improve the quality and durability of decisions by identifying who may be affected, making unequal or unintended effects visible and clarifying the safeguards and accountability arrangements needed in practice.

Human rights and fundamental rights impact assessments are one means of operationalising legal obligations throughout the policy cycle. Applied during the design of legislation, policies, budgets or programmes, these impact assessments can identify the rights affected, assess who may be affected and inform choices before decisions are taken. Their effectiveness depends on the quality and independence of the assessment, access to relevant evidence and expertise, and whether the findings influence the decision. Follow-up during implementation, monitoring and review can then show whether anticipated safeguards are working and whether previously unidentified or changing impacts require adjustment.

These impact assessments can be complemented by other approaches. Climate and nature compatibility checks or applying the ‘do no significant harm’ principle can help align environmental, social and long-term considerations. The value of these approaches lies in assessing whether policies, investments and projects support climate and biodiversity goals. It also lies in making visible possible harms to ecosystems, affected communities and future generations before decisions are locked in.

Using these approaches alongside rights impact assessments can strengthen coherence between climate action and social justice. More broadly, fundamental rights obligations can be integrated from the outset by building transparency and accountability into the design, implementation and review of legislation, policies and programmes.

Public budgets are an area in which fundamental rights obligations have practical consequences, because revenue and expenditure decisions shape access to services, social protection and equal opportunities.Rights-based budgeting applies principles including participation, non-discrimination, transparency and accountability across the budget cycle. It can help in identifying how the allocation of public resources affects different population groups, including people in situations of vulnerability. Where a rights-based budgeting approach is linked to implementation, monitoring and evaluation, it can support more equitable outcomes and strengthen accountability for public finance decisions.

Embedding fundamental rights in decision-making is also relevant where public authorities regulate, fund, contract with or procure from private actors. Due diligence and impact assessment requirements can make human rights and environmental risks more visible in business operations, supply chains and public–private arrangements. Public funding, procurement and regulatory decisions can reinforce these requirements by linking support or market access to applicable rights obligations and by preserving transparency, oversight and access to remedy. This is particularly relevant where simplification initiatives alter reporting, assessment or due diligence requirements.

Democratic participation strengthens resilience when it gives people real influence over decisions, implementation and follow-up. This requires a shift from ad hoc consultation towards more structured, continuous and accountable forms of participation. Under conditions of declining trust, polarisation and societal insecurity, public engagement needs to create visible links between people’s contributions, policy choices and institutional responses. People should be enabled to help in identifying problems, setting priorities and shaping the questions that public institutions seek to address. Institutions that show how public input is used are more likely to sustain trust and demonstrate that democracy can respond to people’s everyday concerns.

Communities, frontline service providers, civil society organisations and local authorities often identify emerging pressures before they become visible through formal monitoring systems. Mechanisms that systematically capture lived experience can provide early warning of social tensions and risks of exclusion. This allows public authorities to respond before problems become entrenched.

Democratic resilience also depends on maintaining the space for debate, disagreement and collective problem-solving. Independent media, civil society organisations, human rights defenders and local actors help societies navigate contested issues, counter information manipulation and sustain engagement during periods of uncertainty and disruption. Their role becomes particularly important when disinformation, harassment or shrinking civic space reduces people’s ability to participate safely and meaningfully.

Participation mechanisms can broaden the range of experiences and perspectives that shape policy responses. Digital platforms may widen access, but meaningful participation also depends on trusted information ecosystems, pluralistic journalism, media literacy, civic education and local democratic infrastructures. Awareness of rights and remedies further strengthens people’s ability to engage with public authorities and challenge decisions.

More permanent civic infrastructures can make public involvement a routine feature of governance, rather than a series of isolated exercises. Citizens’ panels, youth assemblies, student parliaments and democracy labs can create spaces for deliberation, experimentation and collective problem-solving, especially when connected to decision-making and follow-up.

Local and regional authorities can reinforce these infrastructures by applying human rights standards systematically to public service delivery, urban planning and local decision-making. Human rights city frameworks provide a practical basis for connecting participation with access to housing, healthcare, education and public safety, while making local authorities more responsive and accountable to the communities they serve.

Participation can also help extend the time horizon of democratic decision-making. Approaches that engage young people or explicitly consider future generations can bring longer-term consequences into public debate and make the interests of those not yet fully represented more visible. This is particularly relevant where decisions on climate, technology, public investment or preparedness will determine the realisation of rights and opportunities over time.

Accessibility, representation and belonging provide the bases for meaningful participation. Digital divides, socioeconomic inequalities, communication barriers, citizenship, age, disability, poverty and limited resources continue to influence who participates and whose experiences shape public decisions. Closing these gaps is not only a matter of inclusion. It affects whether people see themselves as part of democratic life and whether democratic governance remains legitimate, responsive and resilient.

Accountability requires public authorities and other duty bearers to act in accordance with applicable legal obligations, explain and justify decisions affecting rights, and accept scrutiny and consequences where those obligations are not met. It depends on access to information, independent assessment, the ability of affected people to contest decisions and obtain an effective remedy, and the enforcement of findings or judgments.

Adaptive accountability does not replace these established features of legal accountability. It seeks to keep them effective as technologies, markets, public services and crisis response evolve, including by ensuring that emerging harms and implementation gaps are subject to timely review and that corrective action is taken.

Courts interpret and enforce legal obligations and provide remedies through established legal systems. National human rights institutions, ombudspersons, equality bodies, data protection authorities and other independent oversight bodies complement this judicial role by monitoring compliance, investigating concerns, issuing findings and supporting access to remedies within their respective mandates.

Their effectiveness depends on independence, adequate resources, technical expertise and access to relevant information. Where decisions are shaped by networks of public and private actors, accountability also requires responsibilities to be clearly allocated so that affected people know to whom they can put their case and where they can seek redress.

Accountability depends on institutions being able to access, interpret and act on robust and independent evidence about real-world impacts. Testing, auditing, monitoring and evaluation can help in identifying where systems fail, who is affected and whether harms are isolated or systemic.

Investigative journalists, civic watchdogs and civil society organisations can provide early warnings, document emerging harms and make impacts visible to the public and oversight bodies. Such evidence can inform regulatory or judicial action, but it does not replace the independent legal assessment of whether an obligation has been breached and what remedy or consequence should follow.

Independent verification is particularly important when automated systems are used to monitor or assess other automated systems. Without diverse expertise and institutional scrutiny, assumptions or model architectures may reproduce blind spots or discriminatory biases and create false confidence.

Stronger links between research, policymaking and oversight can support accountability by generating evidence on emerging risks and testing new approaches to safeguards. Strategic litigation complements monitoring and oversight by bringing emerging rights questions before courts and testing regulatory assumptions in practice. This enables authoritative interpretation of legal obligations and, where a violation is established, access to judicial remedies. Judgments and regulatory findings can in turn reveal where implementation, safeguards or institutional practices need to change.

Accountability is not limited to responding after harm has become widespread. Where required or permitted by the applicable legal framework, independent audits, impact assessments, controlled testing and structured reviews can identify risks before systems or policy interventions are deployed at scale. These anticipatory mechanisms support accountability only when findings can be scrutinised, responsibilities are clear and identified problems lead to prevention, correction or enforcement. Accessible complaints mechanisms, independent review and effective remedies remain essential for translating rights into practice.

Rights-based innovation means integrating fundamental rights obligations into the design, development, deployment and review of digital technologies as technologies, markets and governance arrangements evolve. The Charter of Fundamental Rights and EU legislation on data protection, digital services, digital markets and AI have already established legal requirements and safeguards relevant to this process. The longer-term challenge is to ensure that these protections remain effective as technologies, uses and business models change. Integrating rights from the outset can help ensure that innovation supports rights protection, democratic accountability and environmental sustainability, rather than treating these considerations as constraints to be addressed after deployment.

Digital innovation can create new opportunities to exercise rights and participate in society. Accessible public services, assistive technologies, personalised healthcare and adaptive learning systems can remove barriers to participation. Whether these opportunities materialise depends on whether technologies are accessible, reliable and underpinned by robust data and safeguards that allow people to understand, challenge and seek remedy for technology-mediated decisions that are harmful or unlawful.

Human-rights-based standards, certification systems and participatory design approaches can help translate legal obligations into practical governance and design choices, as FRA has noted. Involving civil society organisations, human rights bodies, affected communities, researchers and fundamental rights experts in these processes supports the early identification of risks, exclusionary effects and unintended consequences, before technologies are deployed.

Rights-based innovation also means designing technologies around people’s needs, abilities and rights, rather than requiring people to adapt to technological systems. Accessibility, human agency and contestability can be built into technologies from the earliest stages of development. This can help ensure that innovation strengthens inclusion and respects rights in practice.

Controlled testing environments, regulatory sandboxes and systematic assessment mechanisms can provide evidence about how technologies, including high-risk AI systems, operate in practice. Such approaches can support assessment before and after deployment, helping to identify where systems fail, who is affected and how safeguards may need to be adapted. Under the AI Act, requirements applying to high-risk AI systems already form part of the EU legal framework.

Periodic stress testing can help in assessing whether legal and policy safeguards remain effective as technologies, uses and markets evolve. This is relevant to developments in AI, biometric and immersive technologies, AI-enabled health technologies, neurotechnology and advanced human–machine interfaces, as well as to new applications in education, employment, justice, public administration and security. These approaches can also test whether emerging technologies that aim to address societal needs remain aligned with fundamental rights as they move from experimental settings towards wider use.

At the same time, technological innovation can raise questions that existing legal frameworks were not designed to address directly. Technologies that record, infer or influence physiological, behavioural, emotional or neural activity may challenge established understandings of mental privacy, psychological integrity, autonomy, freedom of thought, non-discrimination and human dignity. This underlines the importance of governance approaches that can identify novel rights questions early while maintaining legal certainty.For example, independent multidisciplinary review mechanisms bringing together scientific, technical and human rights expertise, civil society organisations and affected groups could periodically assess emerging technologies and flag novel rights questions before their use becomes widespread.

Businesses and industry also have a role to play in rights-based innovation, because they design, develop, supply and operate many of the technologies used by public authorities, employers, service providers and individuals. Their responsibilities arise from applicable regulations and, where relevant, human rights and environmental due diligence requirements.

Where public authorities procure or rely on privately developed systems, contractual arrangements should not obscure responsibility for ensuring legality, oversight, access to information and effective remedies. Clear allocation of responsibilities among developers, providers, deployers and public authorities is needed throughout the technology life cycle.

Rights-based innovation also requires attention to the environmental footprint of digital transformation. Life-cycle approaches, environmental impact assessments and circular economy principles can help in assessing energy and water use, resource extraction, electronic waste concerns and supply-chain impacts. Decisions concerning data infrastructures, computing capacity, energy consumption and critical raw materials influence how the environmental benefits, costs and risks of digital transformation are distributed across societies and generations. Safeguards should also consider whether environmental or human rights harms are shifted to communities or jurisdictions outside the EU.

The growing use of biometric technologies, predictive tools and AI-enabled systems reinforces the importance of oversight that combines technical, legal and institutional expertise. Independent scrutiny and specialised expertise can help in identifying emerging impacts, assessing compliance and maintaining public trust as technologies evolve. As technological development accelerates, institutions should assess not only whether innovations are safe and effective but also how they affect people, public services, democratic participation and rights over time.

A rights-based response to the triple planetary crisis requires measures for climate mitigation and adaptation and biodiversity protection to comply with existing fundamental rights and human rights obligations. These measures can help safeguard rights against environmental harm, but they can also affect the protection of rights through changes to housing, energy, transport, employment, land use and access to essential services. A fair and inclusive transition requires their benefits, costs and risks to be distributed without deepening existing inequalities or placing disproportionate burdens on people already facing disadvantage.

Climate action is more likely to be effective and trusted when people affected by environmental degradation or transition measures can influence their design and implementation. Impact assessments, participatory processes and involving affected communities can help make uneven impacts across groups visible and align environmental objectives with equality, social protection and public trust. Meaningful participation can improve the quality and durability of climate action. This applies particularly to measures that affect housing, energy, transport, employment or access to essential services.

Access to justice is a cornerstone of environmental law and governance. Effective implementation depends not only on legal obligations but also on the ability to monitor compliance, identify implementation gaps, challenge harmful decisions and obtain redress when protections fail.

Environmental defenders, civil society organisations, independent journalists and legal support structures play an important role in documenting harm, supporting affected communities and contributing to environmental governance.This requires an enabling environment in which these actors can work independently and safely, free from intimidation, harassment and reprisals, with access to environmental information, decision-making, legal support and effective remedies.

Climate action, biodiversity protection and environmental restoration can generate significant benefits, but they can also create uneven impacts across regions, economic sectors and communities. Just transition measures can help distribute costs and benefits more fairly through social protection, targeted investment, reskilling, economic diversification and support for workers and communities affected by transition pressures. Such measures can strengthen public support for environmental action while reducing the risk that climate policies will deepen existing inequalities.

Environmental stewardship also requires institutions capable of considering long-term ecological interests alongside immediate political and economic priorities. Climate and nature compatibility checks, future-oriented impact assessments and other forward-looking approaches can help make cumulative risks and long-term consequences visible before decisions are locked in. Such approaches can strengthen accountability for future impacts and support decision-making that remains consistent with ecological limits and intergenerational fairness.

Various legal and institutional arrangements can make long-term and ecological interests more visible in decision-making. These include bodies with mandates concerning future generations, requirements to assess long-term impacts, and arrangements through which affected communities or qualified organisations can raise environmental concerns before administrative or judicial bodies. Some legal systems also provide forms of representation or legal standing for particular natural entities. These approaches have different legal foundations and effects and should be considered alongside the enforcement of existing environmental and human rights obligations, rather than as substitutes for them.

Protecting rights under conditions of uncertainty requires institutions and societies that can anticipate risks, absorb shocks and adapt without weakening safeguards. Preparedness is broader than crisis management; it concerns the capacity to maintain essential functions and protect people when disruption occurs, while continuing to comply with applicable legal obligations.

Solidarity mechanisms and universal basic services are also central to social resilience and to protecting rights during major transitions and crises. Predictable support for regions, sectors and communities affected by major transitions or crises can reduce inequalities and prevent exclusion. Access to healthcare, education, housing, childcare and social protection provides stability during periods of change. Lifelong learning and reskilling help people adapt to evolving societal pressures.

Forward-looking planning can help institutions anticipate how risks may evolve and where vulnerabilities may accumulate. Early warning systems, contingency planning, horizon scanning and scenario-based stress testing can support more coherent responses to complex and cascading risks, including where climate, digital, economic and security pressures interact. Their value depends on whether they are connected to decision-making, resource allocation, implementation and review, rather than remaining isolated planning exercises.

Fundamental rights impact assessments can complement these approaches by identifying the applicable obligations, the rights and groups potentially affected and the safeguards required. Scenario-based stress testing can then examine whether those safeguards, oversight arrangements and remedies would remain effective under different forms of disruption.

Preparedness requires cooperation among public authorities, emergency and security services, infrastructure operators, service providers, private actors and affected communities. To support effective and accountable responses, this cooperation should incorporate and maintain clear mandates, identifiable responsibility and accessible avenues for review and redress.

Security-related preparedness is part of this wider agenda. A rights-based approach to disruption needs to consider how cyberattacks, hybrid threats, organised crime, hostile foreign interference, pressures on borders and risks to critical infrastructure may affect rights, institutions and communities. The question is not only how to respond quickly but also how to ensure that security-related measures remain lawful, accountable and subject to democratic control.

Preparedness operates within national, EU and international legal frameworks. These frameworks regulate emergency powers, surveillance, border management measures, law enforcement action, intelligence cooperation and other forms of rapid public intervention. Measures that affect rights must remain lawful, necessary, proportionate and open to challenge.

Courts enforce applicable legal obligations and provide judicial remedies. Parliamentary scrutiny and independent bodies with relevant mandates can review the use of public powers, monitor impacts and investigate concerns. These safeguards are particularly important when emergency measures risk becoming normalised or when the effects of disruption and response measures are distributed unequally.

Responding to crises is only one aspect of preparedness. Institutions also need to learn from experience, monitor implementation and adjust safeguards as risks, evidence and impacts evolve. Scientific and technical evidence, operational experience, judicial rulings, findings by competent oversight bodies and evidence from affected communities can all inform this process.

These sources of evidence and expertise perform different functions: courts authoritatively interpret and enforce legal obligations; oversight bodies act within their mandates; operational actors contribute practical experience; and affected communities provide evidence about impacts. Learning from these sources can improve preparedness, but any adjustment of safeguards must remain consistent with applicable legal obligations.