The European Union in 2030 Report Released

October 27, 2014 

The European Union has more than a half-century of impressive successes, but it has lost direction and momentum over the last decade. Wikistrat’s recently-concluded strategic simulation “The EU in 2030″ articulates a defined sequence of policy initiatives that have the clear ability to remedy that situation, if they are adopted and implemented in the order set out.

Earlier this year, Wikistrat ran a three-week long crowdsourced simulation to explore the centrifugal and centripetal forces that will shape the EU’s future between now and 2030 across three domains: economic and financial; political and security; and social, cultural and human.

On the one hand, the EU has achieved certain supranationalism in the economic sphere such as the common currency, fiscal targets and growing acceptance of transfer payments. On the other hand, its political integration schemes, such as the common foreign and security policy, remain largely stuck at the intergovernmental level. In this way there is a tension between the relative vitality and success of European economic integration on the one hand and, on the other hand, the lack of vitality of a values-oriented common European identity.

The EU has thus turned in a mixed performance across the range of broad policy issue-areas including capabilities, integration level, demographics, membership and global presence. Yet the EU has succeeded impressively at enlarging its membership. The original six-member European Economic Community enlarged to become nine, then 15 members; once the Cold War ended, it rapidly became the European Union of the 28 that we know today, with a few candidates still in line.

Considering these historical strengths and weaknesses, Wikistrat evaluated four master scenarios for the EU’s development as an integration organization up to the year 2030. These “Master Narratives,” outlined in the simulation’s report by Wikistrat Senior and Lead Analyst Robert M. Cutler, show that there in fact exists a possible future path toward enhancing both economic performance and socio-political cohesion in the EU. This unique path was stress-tested and revealed to be extremely robust yet at the same time sensitive to the timing and sequencing of steps.

This path to combined prosperity and social cohesion comprises a series of interdependent policy initiatives ranging across the board, from comprehensive planning to address both legal and illegal immigration as well as solve intra-EU labor mobility problems, to deeper banking and financial integration for enhanced global trade liberalization (with specific recommendations for European Central Bank policy and the euro currency zone). This sequenced series of policy initiatives also includes the need for the EU need to formulate an enhanced geopolitical profile, articulate its real policy goals and deploy resources in favor of realizing them.

That is something that the EU has shied away from indeed since its inception, because the trauma of World War II left such a bitter aftertaste for anything remotely resembling geopolitics. The EU’s failure in the Ukraine crisis highlights this insufficiency, however, illustrating how it is an absolute necessity for Europe to claim its place in the world. Such an explicit, consciously articulated geopolitical profile is also a prerequisite for implementing any of the other steps earlier mentioned.

The simulation offers a clear and unambiguous roadmap for the EU to get to that place, as well as a detailed description of how the EU’s policymaking process should itself be framed, in order to achieve the dual goal of strong European economic growth and strong European identity, based upon European values, with a target date of 2030.

Click here or on the cover image to download the full PDF report.