Is this how young Europeans can reinvent democracy and security in a turbulent era?

Europe stands at an inflection point. The geopolitical landscape that shaped the last three decades has dissolved, replaced by a world defined by war and conflict, an intensifying climate crisis, hybrid threats and a resurgence of authoritarianism. For the generation that is coming of age amid these systemic uncertainties, these developments are not abstract risks. As young Europeans, we inherit institutions designed for a different era and the compounding costs of decisions in which our generation had no voice.

At the heart of Europe’s predicament lies a structural problem predating the current crises: governance systems optimized for short-term electoral cycles and quarterly economic thinking, at the expense of long-term resilience.

Policy scholars describe the defining challenges of our era – climate change, democratic erosion and hybrid warfare – as super wicked problems: challenges where time is running out, no single authority is capable of acting decisively and the systems attempting to solve the crisis are, in part, responsible for creating it. Addressing them demands a fundamental shift in temporal orientation or what practitioners of strategic foresight call temporal empathy: the institutional capacity to act on behalf of future generations.

Here, we draw on insights gathered from youth consultations across Europe and from work on intergenerational foresight and governance, including through the Future50 programme, which documents the structural barriers to long-term democratic governance and offers practical pathways for change.

In 2021, the European Parliament’s Youth Survey found that 70% of young Europeans feel they have little or no say over decisions affecting the EU: a signal not merely of dissatisfaction, but of a deeper structural deficit. Politics that decides over the heads of younger generations risks losing legitimacy when navigating the kind of complex, overlapping crises that define this decade.

The root cause is what behavioural governance theory identifies as present bias: the tendency of institutional systems to favour immediate, visible benefits over long-term, diffuse ones. Europe’s representative democracies were not designed with future voices built into their architecture. The consequences are visible: climate commitments that underperform, digital infrastructure investments that lag, security arrangements not calibrated for hybrid threats.

Three reforms can begin to correct this structural deficit.

These can’t be one-off consultations. They must be standing advisory councils with a formal mandate to review legislation on climate policy, digital governance and security. These structures would institutionalize what Wales has achieved through its Well-being of Future Generations Act: a legislated obligation to account for long-term impacts in present-day decision-making, enforced by an independent commissioner.

A unified European digital identity is a vector of democratic empowerment, not merely an administrative efficiency measure. Secure digital infrastructure enables transnational participation, accelerates digital sovereignty and makes democratic processes more resistant to disinformation and cyberattacks.

According to the 2025 EU Youth Dialogue consultation report, many young Europeans perceive EU institutions as distant and insufficiently accountable. That includes the European Parliament, the institution most directly linked to citizens. Closing this gap is an architectural problem that requires structural redesign.

Democratic agility is, ultimately, a security imperative. Institutions that incorporate plural perspectives and can adapt quickly to changing conditions are measurably more resilient against external disinformation and internal polarization.

Reconstruction efforts, whether in Ukraine or in regions affected by climate-driven disasters, must be approached as long-term strategic investments, not emergency responses. The distinction is material. Emergency responses are governed by high implicit social discount rates: heavy investment now to stop immediate harm, but chronic underinvestment in the durable systems that prevent future harm. Strategic investment, by contrast, treats future stability as roughly as valuable as present security, a position that is not only more equitable across generations, but more economically rational over a multi-decade horizon.

Europe’s willingness to support Ukraine has demonstrated the capacity for decisive collective action. The harder challenge is building institutional capacity for sustained, predictable commitment. Three conditions are necessary for this:

These infrastructures underpin sovereignty and democracy. Europe’s strategic vulnerabilities in digital infrastructure represent precisely the kind of systemic risk that compounds over time if not addressed collectively.

Rebuilding physical infrastructure is insufficient if political institutions remain fragile or susceptible to disinformation. Reconstruction aid should systematically include support for independent media, anti-corruption institutions, educational systems and civic technology, the connective tissue of democratic resilience.

As young people repeatedly stress, climate change is an existential security challenge. Investments in water management, green energy, adaptive agriculture and sustainable urban planning will reduce the likelihood of future shocks that destabilize societies.

If Europe wants reconstruction to lead to peace, it must invest in rebuilding economies and in reinforcing the democratic and environmental systems that make peace sustainable.

The security challenges Europe faces: hybrid warfare, cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, geopolitical competition and climate-driven instability cannot be addressed by traditional defence architectures alone. They are structural problems that resist linear solutions: interconnected, rapidly evolving and resistant to the kind of central authority that conventional security doctrine assumes. What is required is anticipatory governance: the institutional capacity to identify and act on emerging risks before they materialize, rather than responding reactively once crises have cascaded.

We propose three areas for structural evolution:

A European military capacity, tightly coordinated with NATO, but capable of independent action, responsive to the security expectations that young Europeans already hold. Recent youth dialogues across the continent suggest a clear and growing demand for stronger European-level coordination in defence and crisis response.

The creation of an independent European Information Verification Authority would provide credible, real-time countermeasures to disinformation campaigns that already threaten electoral integrity across the continent. Combined with civic-security education, mandatory cybersecurity standards and shared intelligence capabilities, this would significantly strengthen Europe’s information sovereignty.

Technological sovereignty is inseparable from political sovereignty. Governments and operators of critical infrastructure must retain full control over their data, infrastructure and compliance frameworks - while adopting the cloud capabilities and advanced technologies that match the investment levels of strategic competitors.

Security for young Europeans is not solely a military question. It is the condition of living in societies that are cohesive, digitally sovereign, environmentally resilient and democratically vibrant.

Inclusion of young Europeans in decision-making is not a moral aspiration to be invoked when it is politically convenient; it is a strategic necessity. Young people bring three assets that current governance architectures systematically underutilize.

Unlocking this agency requires action at three levels simultaneously:

Europe’s ability to navigate the coming decade hinges on its willingness to transform: to make democracy more participatory, reconstruction more strategic and security more integrated. This transformation will not emerge from crisis management alone. It requires deliberate, forward-looking governance and the active co-creation of that governance with the generation that will inherit its consequences.

The institutional models exist. Wales has legislated future generations’ interests into law. Finland’s Parliamentary Committee for the Future advises on long-term policy. The European Union has recently established a Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness. The direction is clear. What remains is the political will to move from isolated precedents to systemic reform - and to do so at the scale and speed that the moment demands.