Towards the European Union's Foreign Policy 2025 – Taking Stock of the Dahrendorf Foresight Project
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12438 |
| Author | Monika Sus |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
Towards the European Union’s Foreign Policy
2025 –Taking Stock of the Dahrendorf
Foresight Project
Monika Sus
Hertie School of Governance
Abstract
After a decade of economic and political crises, the European Union has arrived at a critical juncture, as has its foreign policy.
The long-running debate on gaining more coherence in EU’s external action as a global security provider has gained more
traction than ever before. The Union is weakened due to recent internal crises from which it is only slowly recovering: the
trust placed in Brussels’institutions by both European citizens and global partners is shrinking and the citizens of one of the
EU’s largest member states, the United Kingdom, have just voted to leave. Based on an analysis of the current state of
the Union, this paper takes stock of the outcomes of the Dahrendorf Foresight Project and looks ahead at the EU’s role in the
world of 2025. By following the narrative of driving forces beyond the EU’s foreign policy, this article makes four policy recom-
mendations for development within the next decade.
The European Union stands at a critical juncture, as does
its foreign and security policy. Among all the political and
economic turmoil that has pulled the Union apart and
divided it internally in the last decade, Brexit has deliv-
ered the coup de gr^
ace. As the High Representative of
the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Frederica
Mogherini (HR), pointed out in June when presenting the
new EU Global Strategy (EUGS), ‘the purpose, even the
existence, of our Union is being questioned’(EUGS, 2016,
p. 2). The perception that existential pressure from both
inside (growing political polarisation, domestic terrorism,
fiscal instability) and outside (Daesh (IS), refugee and
migration crisis, geopolitical ambitions of Russia) will trans-
form the European project seems widely shared. The
future of the Union is uncertain. The EU has been defini-
tively knocked out of its comfort zone where political and
economic stability, liberal order based on the rule of law,
pluralism as well as the absence of major conflicts on
EU’s territory and in its neighbourhood had been taken
for granted. Navigating Europe through stormy waters
requires a systematic analysis of challenges that influence
the development of the European project, both internally
and externally. This paper deals with the latter, following
the assumption that external challenges intrude on EU’s
borders, enter into European societies and can pose a
threat to cohesion (ESPAS, 2015).
Drawing upon the outcomes of the Dahrendorf Foresight
Project (Sus and Pfeifer, 2016), this paper reflects brieflyon
the driving forces likely to shape the EU’s external dimension
and indicates necessary steps to be considered in formulating
and implementing future foreign and security policy over the
next decade. The aim is to show the applicability of scenario
methodology in illustrating future trajectories and downside
risks affecting the EU’s global role.
The paper is set up in three parts. Following an intro-
ductory section on the use of foresight methodology and
scenario generation as particular tools in studying foreign
policy, the paper successively presents four key drivers that
were developed within the Dahrendorf Foresight Project
and will determine the EU’s foreign policy making in the
coming ten years. Drawing on the identified driving forces,
it then puts forward four policy recommendations that
could be taken into consideration while re-shaping and
implementing the EU’s foreign policy. The concluding sec-
tion summarises the findings and links them to the
recently published EUGS –‘Shared Visions, Common
Action: A stronger Europe. A Global Strategy for the Euro-
pean Union’s Foreign and Security Policy’(EUGS).
1
It
reflects to what extend the presented policy recommenda-
tions correspond to the strategy and addresses the ability
of both the EU institutions and the member states to
implement the vision.
Foresight analysis and the study of foreign policy
Military organisations were using scenario construction, in
the form of war games, for defence planning long before it
became a methodological approach of foresight analysis in
other fields (Van der Heijden et al., 2009). The first to use
the methodology to identify economic, political and social
changes was the Shell Company. Already in the late 1960s
Shell was working with scenarios to foresee how the future
would unfold and impact the company (Shell, 2012). In view
of the growing energy demand, Shell’s scenario team dared
Global Policy (2017) 8:Suppl.4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12438 ©2017 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 8 . Supplement 4 . June 2017 115
Research Article
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