Climate Action in the EU of 2035
Workshop outputs drawn live in Skopje and digitised post event
For many years we have worked with our at Future Impacts and their fascinating work in foresight always generates an intriguing and complex illustration. Sadly trips to Europe in the last ten years have diminished due to something that begins with B and will trigger everyone in the room. But it’s still good to get over the channel and be involved in exciting future casting whenever we can.
Here are some words from our friends at Future Impacts on the project.
At the end of 2023, the European Union set out a new enlargement agenda, making it increasingly plausible that additional countries will join the Union within the next decade. Future Impacts, with the support of the European Climate Foundation, spent a year exploring what this could mean for Europe’s climate ambitions.
The project, conducted from mid-2024 to mid-2025, convened more than 240 experts from over 140 organisations across Europe in 12 forward‑looking workshops spanning scenario development, serious gaming, implications analysis, and action planning. Together, they built four distinct futures for an enlarged EU in 2035, exploring how different combinations of accession dynamics, institutional reforms, and political priorities could accelerate, or undermine, climate action in a larger Union. Each scenario highlights different pathways, risks, and opportunities for strengthening climate governance, accelerating decarbonisation, and improving resilience.
Throughout the process, a dedicated scribe from Live Illustration supported the team by capturing discussions and insights from diverse stakeholders across a selection of workshops, distilling them into clear, structured outputs that informed the final scenarios and action recommendations.
For more details on the project see: https://future-impacts.de/portfolio/climate-action-in-the-eu-of-2035-enlargement-perspectives
And to join the conversation visit: https://europeanclimate.org/eu-enlargement-climate-action/
As part of our work we travelled to numerous locations in Europe and visualised the workshops. And it sounds like the EU is thinking of getting bigger. I wonder if there would be any economic benefits to joining one of the world’s largest trading blocks, only 21 miles away forms the UK? Just a thought…
