Trends Identified
Growing need to restore citizens’ perceptions about voice
EU citizens have increasingly grown discontented about the functioning of the EU as a political system. When asked whether their voice matters in the EU a record 67% of the electorate thinks it does not.
2014
Challenges at the horizon 2025
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Rise of anti-EU, anti-establishment movements
The economic and financial crisis has put pressure on the political fabric of EU integration. Anti-establishment and populist parties on the far left and far right are emerging throughout the EU. Exploiting the public sense of economic insecurity and fractured national identity, these parties blame the EU for job losses, public spending cuts and rising immigration.
2014
Challenges at the horizon 2025
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Growing need for effective decision- making
Other challenges include ways for the EU to function more effectively and aggregate citizens’ voice more effectively in order to react to their concerns and build trust at every level of governance121. This is by all means the foremost important challenge the EU is facing over the coming decades.
2014
Challenges at the horizon 2025
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Development of multipolarity and The growing interdependence on unprecedented scale
Over the past decades, the world has moved from a bipolar to a multipolar and multi-actor world order with various power centres and a less certain global security situation. There is no reason to believe that multi-polarisation will not continue. Multipolarity means that there are fewer super states and more middle powers in world affairs due to the rapid economic growth of emerging economies, their increasing role on global markets and the share in foreign investments. Brazil, Russia, India and China together with South Korea, Turkey, Iran, Mexico and Nigeria are the emerging powers of today and tomorrow that make their voices heard on the global geopolitical scene.
2014
Challenges at the horizon 2025
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Rising middle class in the developing world
Economic globalisation and growth in the emerging economies has lifted millions into the middle classes. It is projected that more than 70 million people are crossing the threshold to the middle class each year in almost all emerging economies. By 2020, roughly 40% of the world’s population will have achieved middle-class status by global standards—up from less than 20 % in 2010. This creates major opportunities for investment and prosperity and exports to emerging markets.
2014
Challenges at the horizon 2025
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Growing trade and risk of rising protectionism
Over the last decades, the world has witnessed the broadest and deepest wave of globalisation it has ever seen and levels of trade and foreign direct investment progressed apace. In 2025, the volume of trade is expected to double in comparison to 2005 with most growth coming from Asia. With the economic and financial crisis, these achievements could come under pressure and progress in the negotiations of the Doha Development Agenda of the WTO, essential for the EU prosperity, could be limited. The WTO anchors international trade and a global economy in an open rules-based system based on international law.
2014
Challenges at the horizon 2025
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Growing competition and the rise of emerging powers and relative decline of the West calling for a redistribution of global power and the EU's role in international organisations and the global diplomatic stage
By 2030, the economic power will have shifted from the West to the East and the US, the EU and Japan’s share of the global economy could shrink significantly— reversing their importance relative to the emerging world. As a result, the calls for rebalancing and more effective global coordination are one of the great challenges of current times. Under such trend, the need for cooperation in the framework of WTO as well as materialisation of a single European voice in multilateral institutions becomes imperative.
2014
Challenges at the horizon 2025
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Continuing presence of instability in the world
The security challenges will remain a key issue for the EU over the next two decades. Structural change in Asia, Latin America, Eurasia, and Africa and particularly the Middle East with unresolved religious, sectarian, and ethnic tensions will continue to generate armed violence, including organised crime and terrorism.
2014
Challenges at the horizon 2025
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
A majority of Americans envision a future made better by advancements in technology
When asked for their general views on technology’s long-term impact on life in the future, technological optimists outnumber pessimists by two-to-one. Six in ten Americans (59%) feel that technological advancements will lead to a future in which people’s lives are mostly better, while 30% believe that life will be mostly worse.
2014
US views of technology and the future - science in the next 50 years
Pew Research Center
Predictions for the future: eight in ten Americans think that custom organ transplants will be a reality in the next 50 years, but just one in five think that humans will control the weather
Americans envision a range of probable
outcomes when asked for their own predictions
about whether or not some “futuristic”
inventions might become reality in the next half-century. Eight in ten believe that people needing
organ transplants will have new organs custom-built for them in a laboratory, but an equal number believe that control of the weather will remain outside the reach of science. And on other issues for example, the ability of computers to create art rivaling that produced by humans—the public is much more evenly split.
2014
US views of technology and the future - science in the next 50 years
Pew Research Center