'FOCUS': Foresight Security Scenarios to Plan for Research to Support the 'EU 2035' as a Comprehensive Security Provider

Abstract

This special issue of Information & Security presents selected results from the EU security research project FOCUS (“Foresight Security Scenarios – Mapping Research to a Comprehensive Approach to Exogenous EU Roles”). This project aims to define the most plausible threat scenarios that affect the “borderline” between the EU’s external and internal dimensions to security – and to derive guidance for the Union’s future possible security roles and decisions to plan research in support of those roles. Scenario foresight in the FOCUS project was done on the level of critical and creative – yet methodologically guided – forward thinking at strategic level in order to increase the EU’s ability to cope with relevant alternative futures from the near future until 2035. A first group of articles discusses methods and techniques in scenario-based foresight as integrated and applied within FOCUS. A second group of articles presents selected empirical results from FOCUS scenario foresight on threats, risk management needs, and future EU roles as a comprehensive security provider. A third group of articles introduces research planning implications from selected FOCUS security scenarios. A final set of articles addresses the way ahead: How FOCUS methods and results could be useful beyond the immediate mission and scope of the project to guide policy development and industry strategies.