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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Europe’s future will be shaped by technology, geopolitics, demographic change and the climate crisis and by the choices we make in response. Strategic foresight does not predict the future - it explores how change could unfold. It challenges assumptions and helps institutions to prepare before decisions become urgent.
Fundamental rights must shape that process from the outset. Anchored in law, they provide stable reference points in uncertain times, and they compel us to ask who benefits, who bears the costs, and whether legal safeguards, participation and accountability will remain effective under pressure.
FRA is well placed to advance foresight work. Our mandate, our expertise and evidence on people’s lived experiences, and our engagement with authorities, civil society and rights holders connect long-term thinking with people’s realities. This gives FRA a distinct and indispensable fundamental rights perspective on Europe’s future.
This publication on foresight marks our ambition to make fundamental rights an essential resource for anticipatory governance. FRA’s foresight exercise examines how rights, and the institutions that protect them, may perform under different future conditions. The accompanying guide shows how fundamental rights can be embedded throughout foresight processes, systematically and comprehensively.
Together, the outcomes of the exercise and the guide support more legitimate and resilient policymaking and help societies to navigate change without leaving anyone behind. We urge EU institutions and Member States to make full use of them so that fundamental rights become an integral part of strategic foresight and long-term decision-making.
Foresight also strengthens FRA’s own preparedness. It helps us to anticipate emerging challenges and ensure that our evidence and advice remain agile and relevant as Europe changes.
This work is timely and necessary; the choices of today will determine how well fundamental rights are protected tomorrow.
Sirpa Rautio
Director
