What Role for the EU in 2030 in Peace and Security?

In 2011-2012, EU-GRASP has organized a foresight exercise to project the consequences of the project’s findings into the near future building on the analytical work and the results of a number of case studies and transversal reports. The central research question adopted was: ‘What can be the role of the EU as a security actor in the framework of security governance in the future?’ The aim is to raise awareness on possible relevant issues in the field of multilateral security governance and to look at the consequences for the EU as a regional actor. This document reports the results of this exercise and formulates a set of recommendations for EU officials.
The exercise was divided into three ‘phases’. The first concerned the identification of key variables likely to affect the future multilateral security governance on the basis of a questionnaire to experts and scholars involved in EU-GRASP. The second phase consisted of a two-day participatory workshop (5-6 October 2011) aimed at identifying future ‘scenarios’ on the environment of the EU. The scholars and practitioners in this workshop relied partly on the identified key variables or driving forces of the first phase. The time horizon adopted by the EU-GRASP scenario exercise was of approximately 20 years from today in 2030. Finally, the third phase included a second participatory workshop (24 January 2012), this time involving a larger number of EU policy makers, aiming at identifying security and policy implications for the scenario.