I527-290 ESRIF Final Report (WEB).indd - European Commission

128
Note that the criteria defi ne a balancing act as both the plausibility and the relevance criteria prohibit making scenarios ’too
challenging’; this also makes a lot of sense since if a context scenario were so challenging, e.g., as to include a major war
aff ecting Europe within the next few years, the issue of research with a view to long-term security risks and challenges would
have major problems defending a place on the European security agenda, hence such a scenario would be irrelevant for
ESRIF’s purpose.
Already in making the fi rst draft of the scenarios some variables receiving less attention in the prioritisation exercise were
included as they were tentatively identifi ed as key intermediaries to the policy problems likely to arise in applying the
scenarios, viz.:
Political cohesion of EU
Acceptability of security measures
Public/private roles in civil security
However, in ascertaining that the set of scenarios be both representative (maximally spanning) and plausible – for which a
dedicated IT tool was used – the latter three dimensions did not feature; they were seen as dependent variables the (qualitative)
value of which derives from the key trends treated putatively as independent variables – which of course does not rule out
that patterns of dependency also among these may be subsequently discovered. With a set of core context scenarios defi ned
in terms of combinations of key trends at hand it is then possible to add any number of dependent variables in response to
the scenario users’ needs (e.g., structure of organised crime or security eff ects of major nano-technology breakthrough). This
further detailing of scenarios is essentially part to the next phase – exploitation. It is, on the other hand, not unusual that
exploitation uncovers needs also to modify the core scenarios.
Exploitation of scenarios
In ESRIF the exploitation step happened in the form of workshops with Integration Team members, written input on impacts
of context scenarios on identifi ed risks and challenges for other (mainly political mission) WGs, and bilateral meetings between
WG5 and other WGs. The fi rst two took place during late spring and summer, the latter in December 2008. Generally speaking
the face-to-face meetings were the most useful ones. As already commented this step was not without its problems. These
problems provided helpful food for thought for WG5’s research agenda as further outlined in Sections 5.5 and 5.6. The
substantive conclusions drawn by other WGs are reported in their respective chapters and in the joint conclusions of ESRIF,
part I of this report (cf. Section 5.7).
The context scenarios
By the process described above ESRIF WG5 developed four main context scenarios that were characterised in terms of seven
main dimensions (see Table 2). None of the scenarios is to be seen as positive or negative along all dimensions. Instead, each
of the scenarios shows some positive and some negative facets. Still, Multi-Polar Realism (M) and The West between Threat
and Attraction (W) were seen by scenario exploitation participants as having more negative than positive facets, with Global
Governance (G) and New Welfare for All (N) showing the opposite tendency. The key point of these scenarios is how they have
been exploited (cf. above). Still we fi nd it important to make them publicly available.
SCENARIOS
DIMENSIONS
Global politics
(including
cooperation for
mitigation of climate
change)
GLOBAL
GOVERNANCE (G)
Unprecedented
levels of cooperation
in the face of Climate
change
MULTI-POLAR
REALISM (M)
Competition and
lack of trust among
world powers
ESRIF FINAL REPORT - PART 2 • Working Group: Foresight and Scenarios
NEW WELFARE FOR
ALL (N)
US and EU strongly
committed to liberal
democracy; strained
relations with
authoritarian powers
THE WEST
BETWEEN THREAT
AND ATTRACTION
(W)
US with junior
partner EU engaged
in Global struggle
against violent
extremism; interest
based cooperation
with others