1. Summary
2. NATO & EU Recent Initiatives
3. NATO and EU Foresight Reports
4. Priorities for the Black Sea Region
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography

01 — Overview

Summary

In last years, resilience became a defining priority across the Euro-Atlantic space, as both the European Union and NATO adapted to a deteriorating global landscape marked by geopolitical confrontation, increasing hybrid threats, technological disruption, resource competition and accelerating climate impacts.

Looking at future trends, the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report of the EU Commission advocates a proactive, transformative model of "Resilience 2.0," centred on technological leadership, democratic cohesion, economic security, robust infrastructures and intergenerational fairness.

At the same time, NATO Strategic Foresight Analysis identifies seven long-term global drivers, that define the strategic environment through 2040: climate collapse, resource scarcity, disruptive AI, geoeconomic fragmentation, empowered nonstate networks, competition over global commons and a transforming international order.

In this setting, the European Union launched a Preparedness Strategy, that sets a comprehensive framework for strengthening Member States' capacity to anticipate and respond to complex crises. It introduces measures to secure essential services, reinforce civil–military cooperation, raise societal preparedness, align risk assessments, and institutionalize public–private partnerships.

In parallel, with the ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 initiative, EU seeks to mobilize up to €800 billion to expand and modernize Europe's defence industrial base, deepen joint procurement and support Ukraine.

In response to future trends, NATO placed resilience at the core of deterrence and collective defence at the 2025 Summit in The Hague, committing Allies to allocate 5% of GDP to defence by 2035, including an unprecedented 1.5% dedicated explicitly to civil resilience. NATO now pursues a layered resilience approach integrating societal, civil and military dimensions, informed by lessons from the Russia–Ukraine war.

Within this context, the Black Sea Region is positioned to evolve into a regional hub for NATO–EU coordination, resilience and strategic foresight, shaped by the deepening convergence between NATO and the EU on critical infrastructure protection, cybersecurity, hybrid threat response, climate and energy security, and civil–military cooperation.

In this environment, regional priorities should focus on strengthening societal preparedness, improving public awareness and digital literacy, countering disinformation, and consolidating the resilience of essential services and infrastructures such as energy, water, transport and communications. At the same time, enhanced public–private cooperation and the integration of private operators into the resilience architecture are indispensable, given the strategic importance and vulnerability of the region's infrastructure and information landscape.

Also, building on NATO's layered resilience concept and the EU's Preparedness Strategy, the region is positioned to expand multinational civil–military exercises, harmonize NATO–EU methodologies, and develop anticipatory tools capable of translating global strategic drivers into regional scenarios. This includes establishing the Black Sea area as a foresight and methodological hub, while strengthening structured cooperation with Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova in preparedness, crisis response and resilience assessments.

02 — Policy

NATO & EU Recent Initiatives

EU Preparedness Strategy

In March 2025, the EU presented a strategy with the objective of supporting Member States in strengthening their capacity to prevent and respond to emerging threats and complex crises. The strategy includes a detailed action plan and outlines 30 key actions, the most important for the Black Sea Region referring to:

Resilience of Essential Services

Ensuring the supply of water and other essential natural resources; Reviewing the energy security framework, adapting it to the geopolitical context; Assessing the level of preparedness in the field of financial services, especially the ability to ensure the continuity of critical functions, payments and the financing of the economy under all circumstances; Integrating the concept of preparedness into EU policies and actions; Adopting minimum preparedness requirements.

Promoting Population Preparedness

Encouraging the public to adopt practical measures, such as keeping essential supplies for a minimum of 72 hours in emergency situations; Increasing awareness of risks and threats; Promoting preparedness in youth programmes.

Crisis Response

Establishing an EU crisis centre to improve integration between existing EU crisis structures.

Strengthening Civil–Military Cooperation

Periodic organization of preparedness exercises at EU-wide level, bringing together the armed forces, civil protection, police, security, medical personnel and firefighters; Facilitating dual-use investments; Launching a platform for exchanging national best practices in civil–military interactions and the reciprocal use of civilian and military resources.

Strengthening Forecasting and Anticipation Capacities

Developing a comprehensive EU-level risk and threat assessment, contributing to the prevention of crises such as natural disasters or hybrid threats; Developing an EU training catalogue and a platform for lessons learned.

Increasing Public–Private Cooperation

Creating a public–private working group for emergency preparedness; Formulating emergency protocols together with businesses to ensure the rapid availability of essential materials, goods and services and to secure critical production lines; Developing a customized resilience-testing methodology to assess the preparedness and resilience of Member States' research and innovation sectors.

Resilience through External Partnerships

Collaboration with strategic partners such as NATO in the fields of military mobility, climate and security, emerging technologies, cyberspace, space and the defence industry; Promoting mutual resilience with candidate countries; Integrating preparedness and resilience into bilateral partnerships and multilateral institutions; Integrating preparedness and resilience into cooperation with NATO.

Since the strategy's adoption, two operational policy tracks have been launched under its umbrella:

The EU's Stockpiling Strategy

An initiative built to make sure essential items are available during big cross-border emergencies like wars, pandemics, disasters caused by climate change, or widespread infrastructure breakdowns. It signals a move away from just-in-time supply systems to a more resilient approach that values being ready, having backups, and keeping supply chains running smoothly. This plan includes necessities like food, water, fuel, medical gear, and vital civil protection tools, recognizing that crises often hit multiple areas at once.

One of the key parts of this strategy is how EU-wide stockpiles work together with national ones instead of being entirely centralized. While individual countries still manage and own most of their reserves, the EU steps in with support through guidelines, funding, and systems—mainly using the Civil Protection Mechanism and rescEU—to help quickly share and move supplies when needed. This method respects each country's control while also promoting EU-wide teamwork, so supplies can cross borders when a single country can't handle a crisis alone.

On a community level, the strategy also pushes countries to update advice about preparing households to be self-sufficient for the first 72 hours of an emergency. The idea is to help people take care of themselves during the crucial early phase, which eases the burden on emergency services and lets responders focus on those most at risk and on keeping essential services running. This reflects a bigger shift toward a culture of preparedness and shared responsibility, bringing the EU more in line with the well-established Nordic and Baltic approaches to total defence and societal resilience.

Since the strategy's adoption on 9 July 2025, the European Commission has begun shifting from policy planning toward coordination and implementation steps. One of the earliest tangible outputs has been the formation of frameworks for an EU Stockpiling Network, intended to bring national stockpile authorities together to share best practices, coordinate stock data and address overlaps or gaps in essential supplies such as food, water, medicines and fuels.

Another developing area linked to the strategy — though still evolving — is the planned establishment of a Critical Raw Materials Centre, expected in 2026, which would support coordinated purchases and strategic stockpiles of key industrial inputs (including for the energy and medical sectors). This would be one of the first concrete operational facilities created under the broader stockpiling initiative, aimed at reducing strategic dependencies and improving readiness for crises.

The EU's Medical Countermeasures Strategy

This strategy is all about protecting people's health during major health crises by making sure vaccines, treatments, tests, and vital medical gear are quickly available. It was created in direct response to the problems revealed by the COVID-19 pandemic and views health readiness as a key part of the EU's overall security and resilience—not just a healthcare issue. The strategy covers everything from research and development to production, stockpiling, purchasing, and distributing medical supplies.

At the centre of this strategy is HERA, the EU's main agency for health emergency readiness and response. HERA keeps an eye on potential threats, plans ahead, makes advance purchase deals, manages EU stockpiles, and partners with manufacturers to ensure they can ramp up production fast when needed. The goal is to avoid the kind of disorganized buying and supply shortages that happened early in the COVID-19 crisis.

This strategy also ties into the EU's bigger plans for becoming more self-sufficient and protecting its supply chains. It aims to cut back on reliance on single suppliers or non-EU countries for critical medical items, spread out production across different locations, and make regulations more flexible during emergencies. By connecting health readiness with industrial, research, and security policies, the EU is making it clear that strong healthcare systems are vital not just for saving lives, but for keeping society stable, the economy running, and politics steady during tough times.

ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 Initiative

In parallel, the European Union launched the strategic initiative ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030, aimed at mobilizing up to €800 billion through the fiscal derogation clause, the SAFE instrument and other complementary measures, with the objective of strengthening, expanding and modernizing the defence industrial base of Member States and supporting joint procurement of modern and interoperable military equipment.

Through SAFE and the flexibilization of fiscal regulations, the EU aims to develop its capacity to react quickly and efficiently in a military or security crisis, a sign of strategic financial resilience. The initiative's focus on two essential elements of structural resilience: strengthening the defence industry aims at developing its dimensions of interoperability, efficiency and competitiveness, and at creating an ecosystem capable of rapidly supporting joint efforts. The initiative also addresses the strengthening of direct military support to Ukraine and reducing dependence on external suppliers, thereby aiming to strengthen strategic resilience and collective security in the face of threats.

Rearm Europe includes plans for the development of multimodal infrastructure (rail, road, maritime, air), facilitating rapid force deployment — a key component of military resilience — while simultaneously strengthening the resilience of transport infrastructure.

In conclusion, the ReArm Europe / Readiness 2030 Initiative represents an approach centred on increasing Europe's resilience from a military, industrial and strategic perspective. It constitutes a complementary approach to the EU Preparedness Strategy, applied in the military and financial context.

In the second half of 2025, the Council of the European Union took a decisive step by translating ReArm Europe from a political commitment into binding EU regulatory action. In December 2025, the Council adopted amendments designed to simplify and accelerate defence and dual-use investments, notably by streamlining approval procedures, shortening permitting timelines, and clarifying eligibility for EU financial instruments. Rather than establishing a new, standalone defence fund, these measures deliberately recalibrated existing EU programmes to accommodate large-scale defence investment, reducing reliance on repeated exemptions or ad-hoc derogations. Crucially, this legal shift established an important precedent by formally recognising defence readiness as a matter of European public interest, thereby justifying differentiated treatment within EU economic governance and regulatory frameworks.

By year's end, the Defence Readiness Omnibus became the main tool for putting ReArm Europe into action. Instead of starting from scratch, the Omnibus made coordinated changes to various existing EU laws. The approach was practical, as speed was seen as being more important than building a brand-new system. The Omnibus targeted bottlenecks in procurement, industrial policy, and funding. It made it easier to go from project planning to actual contracts, especially when multiple countries were working together. It also clarified how civilian programs could support defence efforts, as long as the outcomes had both civilian and military uses. Most importantly, it helped eliminate fragmentation. Defence readiness wasn't treated as a special case anymore, but it became part of mainstream EU policy, woven into various instruments and sectors.

Meanwhile, the European Commission worked on the Defence Readiness Roadmap 2030 throughout the second half of 2025. The Roadmap offered strategic guidance, pointing out which capabilities and industrial gaps required joint European action. This wasn't a detailed buying plan, but more of a coordination tool. It helped align national defence plans with broader EU goals and encouraged countries to rally around shared priorities rather than each going their own way. Key focus areas included mobility for military operations, air and missile defence, drones, ammunition production, and strengthening logistics.

By late 2025, the Roadmap became the go-to guide for how to apply SAFE loans, national defence budgets, and new EU regulatory flexibilities.

A major breakthrough also came in the second half of 2025: EU countries were now explicitly allowed to use the flexibility in EU fiscal rules to boost defence spending without facing penalties. This marked a shift in how "responsible" spending was defined, acknowledging that security demands justified increased budgets.

In tandem, the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) instrument moved from an idea to a real, ready-to-use funding tool. SAFE was created to support large-scale defence procurement and industrial investment, especially for high-cost projects that individual countries couldn't afford alone. By the end of 2025, the framework and eligibility rules were in place for SAFE to launch in 2026.

Together, SAFE and fiscal flexibility addressed the key financial problem facing European defence: the gap between ambitions and what countries could actually afford on their own.

Throughout this period, EU leaders kept reinforcing the broader political message behind Readiness 2030. Defence spending was no longer a short-term reaction to the war in Ukraine—it was now seen as a long-term necessity in a world of ongoing strategic rivalry.

European Council decisions, ministerial comments, and Commission briefings all echoed a shared view: Europe's security readiness was tightly linked to its economic resilience, tech independence, and crisis preparedness. This strong consensus helped reassure industry and investors that defence spending and military industrial growth would be sustained—not just a passing phase.

By December 2025, ReArm Europe had matured from a politically sensitive idea into a coherent EU policy framework, with supporting laws, funding tools, and strategic direction all in place.

NATO Summit in The Hague (2025)

In the context of an increasingly dynamic international security environment, characterized by geopolitical confrontation, high-intensity armed conflicts and the multiplication of hybrid and conventional threats, the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague enshrined resilience as the foundation of deterrence and collective defence, establishing the integration of the seven baseline requirements into national planning.

All 32 Member States (with the exception of Spain, which received a temporary exemption) committed to reaching 5% of GDP allocated annually to defence and related expenditures by 2035, with 3.5% dedicated to "effective defence" (equipment, salaries, ammunition, etc.) and 1.5% dedicated to civil resilience (energy networks, telecommunications, transport), critical infrastructure and civil crisis-support capabilities, as well as strategic stocks and preparedness for hybrid crises.

Thus, NATO includes for the first time civil and societal resilience as an explicitly budgeted element within the defence target. Through this decision, NATO confirmed that resilience is not an auxiliary dimension, but an integral part of the defence architecture, which must be planned and financed with the same rigour as military capabilities.

Furthermore, the more recent but still expanding concept of layered resilience, introduced to reflect lessons identified from the Russia–Ukraine war, emphasizes that institutional and military preparedness must be combined with the robustness and flexibility of civilian infrastructures and societal cohesion to generate an integrated, efficient and adaptable defence system.

The Hague Declaration mentions that NATO and the EU must align their resilience and preparedness strategies, including for energy security; protection of critical infrastructure (ports, submarine cables, space, digital networks); joint response to hybrid and cyber attacks. The need for NATO–EU complementarity on resilience was emphasized: NATO for collective defence, the EU for civil infrastructure and crisis response.

Additionally, leaders agreed to reduce barriers to defence trade among allies and to develop transatlantic industrial cooperation, emphasising resilient supply chains for ammunition, digital technology, chips, energy and critical materials.

In terms of societal resilience and strategic communication, the Summit linked societal resilience to education, population preparedness and partnership with the private sector (technology, media, energy), emphasizing the fight against disinformation and malign foreign influence.

NATO leaders committed at The Hague to strengthening deterrence and defence, with particular emphasis on the eastern flank. In the months following the summit, this commitment translated into continuity rather than disruption: existing force posture and forward presence were maintained, large-scale exercises continued as planned, and NATO's operational planning cycle remained on track. From an Alliance management perspective, this signalled steadiness and reliability, reassuring Allies that agreed defence plans were being upheld without delay or confusion.

At the same time, there was no major post-summit escalation or structural overhaul of NATO's military posture. No significant new permanent deployments were announced, nor were there substantial changes to NATO's command arrangements that could be directly traced to decisions taken in The Hague. This absence of dramatic moves indicates that NATO deliberately chose not to redefine deterrence through visible force expansion, opting instead to preserve an already heightened baseline established in previous years.

Taken together, this outcome suggests that NATO delivered on stability and reassurance but stopped short of bold or transformative deterrence initiatives. The Alliance demonstrated that it could sustain readiness and coherence under pressure, but it did not seek to signal a new phase of military escalation. In that sense, the post-summit period reflects continuity rather than transformation, reinforcing existing commitments rather than reshaping them.

On defence industrial capacity, the momentum that NATO highlighted at The Hague shifted decisively toward the European Union. While the summit underscored the importance of defence production, stockpiles, and industrial resilience, most tangible progress since then has occurred through EU initiatives such as ReArm Europe, Readiness 2030, and the Defence Readiness Omnibus. NATO has continued to play a role in coordinating requirements, standards, and interoperability, but it has not positioned itself as the main driver of industrial scaling or financing.

As a result, NATO did not itself deliver the industrial outcomes it emphasised at the summit, but it relied on parallel EU action to fill that gap. Strategically, this arrangement is coherent, even if institutionally indirect.

Finally, the summit's broader political messages have produced mixed but telling results. Pressure—particularly from the United States—for greater European responsibility has clearly worked at the level of narrative and planning, as reflected in EU-level defence investment frameworks and national budgetary signals. Yet uncertainty about the long-term U.S. force posture in Europe remains unresolved, with no post-summit clarity beyond reaffirmations of Article 5. Support for Ukraine has continued consistently, and Russia remains framed as a long-term threat, but without any qualitative escalation such as new membership steps or NATO-led security guarantees. Overall, NATO has largely done what it said it would do in terms of alignment, planning, and coordination, while postponing most hard delivery to the medium term and, in practice, to other institutions—above all, the EU.

NATO–EU Common Perspective

NATO–EU cooperation has seen significant expansion in recent years, confirmed by the 2025 joint report ("Tenth progress report on the implementation of the common set of proposals endorsed by EU and NATO Councils on 6 December 2016 and 5 December 2017"), which highlights convergent areas of action such as the protection of critical infrastructures, cyber security, military mobility, public health, climate change and combating hybrid threats.

NATO sets the political-military framework and the seven baseline requirements on civil preparedness, while the EU provides normative and financial tools through CER, NIS2, SAFE and the EDF, a situation that turns resilience into an area of practical complementarity.

In this context, of increasing NATO-EU convergence on the topic of resilience, the Black Sea area stands out as a key testing ground for the application of this shared view. This is because the area is home to a large number of the vulnerabilities that are increasingly being addressed by both organizations: military pressure, hybrid threats, critical infrastructures, and interdependencies.

From a NATO point of view, the Black Sea is an essential part of the Eastern Flank and is closely connected to collective defence, deterrence, and crisis management. The security context is characterized by the proximity of active and frozen conflicts, the militarization of the sea and airspace, and the constant hostile actions below the threshold of armed conflict. This creates a high demand for civil preparedness and resilience, in accordance with NATO's baseline requirements, since military effectiveness in the region cannot be separated from the continuity of civilian activities.

However, the European Union has its own approach to the Black Sea, which is mainly that of strategic interdependence. This is because the EU is faced with the Black Sea as an area where any kind of disturbance in energy, transport, food, or digital infrastructure has immediate spillover effects within the Union. The EU, therefore, uses its instruments to address vulnerabilities that are of a structural nature, as opposed to those that are episodic. This is because the EU policies ensure that resilience is translated into enforceable standards.

The Black Sea region is thus a particularly good example of the functional complementarity between NATO and the EU. While NATO sets the strategic context and the level of readiness necessary to resist dramatic security shocks, the EU offers the legal, economic, and technological infrastructure necessary to implement resilience on a day-to-day basis. In a context where there is a lot of hybrid pressure and ambiguity, this division of labor becomes a force multiplier rather than a weakness, as long as the coordination mechanisms are effective.

03 — Analysis

NATO and EU Foresight Reports

European Commission's 2025 Strategic Foresight Report

In September 2025, the European Commission published a new strategic foresight report, Resilience 2.0: strengthening the EU's capacity to thrive in conditions of turbulence and uncertainties, which introduces the concept of "Resilience 2.0," emphasising a shift to a proactive, transformative, future-oriented approach that ensures a decisive advantage in the new geopolitical reality marked by unpredictability. The report identifies both global and EU-specific challenges and proposes areas of action meant to ensure the Union's resilience and enable it to fully benefit from its transformative power in a changing world. These areas include:

• Developing a coherent global vision for the EU – Defining a clear European strategic concept based on values and interests; Accelerating the enlargement process and gradual integration of candidate countries.
• Enhancing internal and external security – Civil-military synergies and an integrated approach to defence and security; Robust European critical infrastructures (digital, energy, transport, space); Societal preparedness and rapid response capacity; Strengthened EU–NATO cooperation.
• Harnessing the power of technology and research – Leadership in global governance of high-impact technologies (AI, clean tech, biotechnologies); Developing strategic autonomy in essential tech value chains; Setting global standards for AI and promoting a European ethical, human-centred model; Responsible approaches to controversial technologies (superintelligence, human augmentation, solar geoengineering).
• Strengthening long-term economic resilience and preparing for labour-market changes – Strengthening strategic industries and supply chains; Developing the circular economy and internal resources (critical raw materials); Adapting the labour market to technological and demographic transformations.
• Supporting sustainable and inclusive well-being – Reforming taxation systems (shifting the burden from labour to negative externalities); Strengthening medical supply chains and health prevention.
• Reimagining education – Adapting curricula to future skills (STEM, AI, creativity, adaptability); Investing in retraining and upskilling to respond to automation and AI.
• Strengthening the foundations of democracy as a common good – Combating polarization, information manipulation and disinformation; Involving local communities and civil society; Promoting democratic deliberation and trust in European institutions.
• Anticipating demographic transformation and intergenerational fairness – Creating a European framework for intergenerational equity; Promoting solidarity and social cohesion between generations; Ensuring long-term sustainability of the welfare state and public services.

The 2025 Strategic Foresight Report concludes that the European Union must shift from reactive crisis response to proactive, forward-looking resilience — labelled "Resilience 2.0" — to ensure it can anticipate, absorb, adapt to, and shape future disruptions and opportunities through to 2040 and beyond. This approach positions resilience not just as survival, but as transformative capacity that bolsters competitiveness, security, democratic values and societal well-being in an uncertain and rapidly changing world.

NATO Strategic Foresight Analysis 2023 (SFA23)

The document provides a common understanding of the evolving security environment up to 2043, serving as the foundation for the Alliance's strategic reflection.

SFA23 concludes that rivalry and adversarial intentions of major state actors and non-state terrorist actors will persist in a context marked by disruptions. They will seek to influence and challenge the Alliance, as well as to question the rules-based international order. To this end, they will strengthen their power and seek to expand their influence, exploiting instabilities and resorting to digital, socio-economic and hybrid means.

The report identified 170 global trends and synthesized the most influential into seven drivers shaping the future security environment:

• Climate collapse and biodiversity loss – considered the most significant long-term existential factors.
• Resource scarcity – fuelling instability and regional conflicts.
• The era of AI and disruptive technologies – rapidly reshaping states, societies and armed forces.
• Geoeconomics fuelling polarization – the fragmentation of the global system into economic blocs, with major implications for trade, demography and financial security.
• Powerful human networks – non-state actors becoming more influential through urbanization, technologization and the avalanche of information/disinformation.
• Competition for global commons – intensified by strategic demand and technological progress (e.g., space, polar regions).
• An international order in transition – challenging the rules-based order, global fragilization, new alliances and intensified strategic competition.

The NATO Strategic Foresight Analysis 2023 (SFA23) highlights that the Alliance will be operating in the next two decades in a more contested, fragmented, and volatile security environment, which will be marked by strategic rivalry, systemic disruption, and the degradation of the rules-based international order. The state and non-state actors will continue to challenge the Alliance in the next two decades in various domains, which will be below the threshold of armed conflict.

The seven drivers of change that have been identified in SFA23 show that the future of security will be one of interconnected, cumulative, and nonlinear challenges, where climate collapse, disruptive technologies, and geopolitical fragmentation will be the force multipliers of instability.

Taken together, SFA23 finds that NATO must be able to continuously adapt its tools of power, decision-making, and partnerships in order to remain credible and effective. This involves building resilience, sustaining technological and military superiority, enhancing anticipation and early warning, and sustaining unity of purpose among Allies. Strategic foresight thus becomes not just an analysis tool, but an essential tool for NATO's long-term deterrence, defence, and shaping of the security environment through 2043.

NATO–EU Similarities in Foresight

Both NATO and the European Union foresee a future marked by greater instability, strategic competition, and fragmentation. They agree that the international environment will become increasingly contested over the next two decades, with rising geopolitical tensions and the weakening of multilateral norms challenging the rules-based global order.

A shared concern is the proliferation of hybrid threats. Both institutions highlight that state and non-state actors are leveraging tactics below the threshold of open conflict—such as cyberattacks, disinformation, and economic coercion—to destabilize societies and weaken institutional trust. Addressing these threats requires coordinated, cross-domain responses.

Technological transformation is another critical area of convergence. NATO and the EU emphasize the importance of retaining a competitive edge in emerging and disruptive technologies, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and cybersecurity. Both foresee technology as a double-edged sword—offering opportunities for resilience and innovation but also new vulnerabilities.

Climate change is identified as a major threat multiplier by both organizations. The reports link environmental degradation to increased conflict, migration, and economic disruption. They stress that climate-related challenges will increasingly intersect with security, demanding integrated responses that combine defence, environmental, and social policy tools.

Resilience emerges as a central theme in both foresight strategies. NATO emphasizes civil preparedness and societal resilience as vital to military effectiveness, while the EU integrates resilience into policy planning, infrastructure protection, and crisis management. Both view resilience as key to absorbing shocks and sustaining operational continuity.

Finally, NATO and the EU stress the importance of strategic foresight as more than a planning tool—it is a critical enabler of long-term security, governance, and preparedness. Both call for enhanced partnerships, shared intelligence, and closer coordination to effectively navigate the complex challenges of the coming decades.

04 — Regional Focus

Priorities for the Black Sea Region

In this context of growing geopolitical rivalry, the Black Sea Region stands out as a region where the global strategic trends manifest themselves with particular intensity. The overlap of military pressure, hybrid threats, critical infrastructure interdependencies, and societal vulnerabilities puts the region at the nexus of the NATO deterrence and defense strategy and the European Union resilience and preparedness strategy.

Thus, the Black Sea is no longer a marginal theater but rather a central arena for the testing of the coherence and effectiveness of the emerging NATO-EU common view on resilience. The strategic foresight analysis of both NATO and the European Union highlights that the future security challenges will be more and more interconnected, transboundary, and nonlinear. The effects of climate change, technological disruption, geoeconomic fragmentation, and the rise of hybrid threats are already being felt in the Black Sea region, which is further aggravating the vulnerabilities in the region. In this scenario, the concept of resilience cannot be dealt with in a sectoral manner or through a national approach.

Defining clear regional priorities becomes essential for translating shared assessments and policy frameworks into practical action. The following priorities, if pursued by the Black Sea Region countries, would do much to operationalize NATO–EU convergence on resilience, focusing on areas where coordinated efforts can deliver the greatest strategic impact, reduce vulnerabilities and strengthen the region's capacity to anticipate, withstand and adapt to complex crises.

05 — Final Remarks

Conclusion

06 — Sources

Bibliography

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