Europe faces a convergence of crises: a crumbling international order, wars, democratic backsliding, economic stagnation, critical dependencies, and fracturing alliances. At the same time, the institutional architecture that underpinned its most prosperous decades is cracking.
The scenarios presented in this policy brief suggest that Europe’s future remains highly volatile. By 2035, Europe could drift towards fragmentation, lose strategic agency, or even face political disintegration. Equally, it could emerge as a more capable, cohesive, and influential actor. Which path Europe takes will depend on the political choices made in the second half of the 2020s.
Four scenarios illustrate these divergent potential trajectories:
- Europe Has Gone to Hell: The EU disintegrates amid economic decline, illiberal capture, and eroding security, leaving Europe dominated by external powers.
- Europe Forged in War: Europe restores its security credibility under existential threat, but at the cost of economic stagnation, democratic backsliding, and a narrowly focused policy agenda.
- Torn Apart and Ground Down: Europe becomes an arena of great-power competition, losing autonomy, cohesion, and competitiveness in an increasingly bipolar world.
- Europe’s Rise: Through rapid coordination on governance, investment, and security, the EU emerges as a capable global actor despite a hostile geopolitical environment.
With the EU at the eleventh hour, the scenarios point to four strategic priorities for policymakers before 2030:
- The EU and its Member States should be serious about growth, competitiveness and resilience, by strengthening joint investment in European public goods, including collective defence, climate protection, and digital infrastructure, while deepening the Single Market.
- They should protect and strengthen Europe’s decision-making capacity through institutional safeguards that prevent paralysis in the face of growing political heterogeneity.
- Together with NATO allies, they should establish visible security credibility early, focusing on capabilities that stabilise expectations and deter adversarial probing.
- They should diversify global partnerships particularly with the UK, Norway, Canada, Australia, ASEAN, India, the Gulf states, Japan, South Korea, and the MERCOSUR countries.
Early, visible, and coordinated action could keep Europe on a path towards greater strategic agency and ultimately preserve its ability to shape its own future and sustain the European model. The alternative is not a wobbly but enduring status quo, but a gradual drift towards the negative outcomes detailed in scenarios one through three.
