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

The vision of Europe explored in this report is not defined by one single transformation. It is shaped by the interaction of technological change, ecological limits, economic restructuring, strains on democracy and pressures linked to security, disruption and preparedness. Many of these developments are already visible.

What remains uncertain is their scale, direction and interaction in the period to 2040. Developments could expand access, participation and opportunity, but they could also create new dependencies, unequal burdens and accountability gaps. The central challenge for 2040 is not only whether Europe can adapt to change but whether it can do so in ways that keep people’s rights, agency and access to remedy meaningful in practice.

Rights protection will increasingly depend on how institutions govern complexity: whether environmental and economic transitions distribute costs and benefits fairly, whether democratic participation meets people’s expectations of having real influence, whether automated systems can be understood and challenged, whether crisis preparedness strengthens resilience without normalising exceptional measures and whether safeguards can be reviewed and adjusted as risks, evidence and impacts evolve. It will also depend on whether the rights enshrined in law today remain protected and enforced, and whether legal and institutional frameworks keep pace with changing conditions without weakening existing safeguards.

Fundamental rights law provides a binding framework for making choices under uncertainty. It helps identify who may be affected, whose voices are missing, where power is unchecked, where remedies are weak and where short-term decisions may create long-term harm. It also makes visible the institutional conditions needed to keep rights effective in practice, including transparency, participation, independent scrutiny, accountability and effective access to justice.

The pathways set out in this report reinforce one another. Rights-based decision-making, meaningful participation, adaptive accountability, rights-aligned innovation, a fair environmental transition and preparedness for disruption all point in the same direction: towards governance that is more anticipatory, participatory and accountable.

The examples presented in the boxes illustrate different ways of putting this into practice. They include established legal and governance mechanisms – such as rights impact assessments and requirements regarding judicial and independent oversight and review – and more exploratory approaches, such as democratic resilience stress tests and institutional arrangements for considering future generations.

For policymakers, the findings suggest that long-term thinking should be connected more directly to legal obligations, implementation enforcement and accountability. For human rights actors, they underline the importance of engaging with the systems that will shape how rights are exercised in practice: digital infrastructures, public finance, environmental governance, labour markets, democratic systems and crisis preparedness. For foresight practitioners, the findings show that futures work can become more robust when it asks not only what may change but who may be affected, which rights and legal safeguards may come under pressure and how rights can remain protected and enforceable over time.

Looking ahead does not remove uncertainty. It does, however, make it possible to test assumptions, anticipate tensions and identify choices that might otherwise remain invisible until harms are already entrenched. In this sense, fundamental rights are not only protections to be defended in times of change. They are also a way of shaping change, by keeping human dignity, equality, accountability and access to justice at the centre of decisions about Europe’s future.