Young Euro-Atlantic Resilience Strategy 2035

Ljubljana, September 2026 – YATA Slovenia, the Youth Section of the Euro-Atlantic Council of Slovenia, has published the Young Euro-Atlantic Resilience Strategy 2035, a strategic document bringing together young perspectives on the future of the Euro-Atlantic order and the choices required to strengthen its resilience, legitimacy and capacity to act over the coming decade.

The Strategy is the final output of the workshop “Shaping the Future of the Euro-Atlantic Order After the Rupture,” organised by YATA Slovenia at the Young Bled Strategic Forum 2026 in Kranjska Gora on 29 August. It builds on the work initiated during the workshop, consolidating participants’ assessments, strategic priorities, and policy recommendations into a broader framework for thinking about the future of the Euro-Atlantic community towards 2035.

At the centre of the Strategy is a simple question:

“How should the Euro-Atlantic community respond to a strategic environment in which many of the assumptions that shaped the previous decades can no longer be taken for granted?”

Russia’s war against Ukraine, geopolitical competition, technological disruption, pressure on democratic institutions, strategic dependencies, climate-related risks and societal fragmentation increasingly overlap and reinforce each other. Together, they pressure institutions and societies while challenging established approaches to security, cooperation, and resilience.

The Young Euro-Atlantic Resilience Strategy 2035 approaches this environment as a broader period of rupture and structural transformation, rather than a collection of individual crises. Its purpose is not to propose a return to the conditions that preceded it. Instead, the Strategy asks what should be defended, what must adapt and what needs to be rethought if the Euro-Atlantic order is to remain resilient and capable of responding to a changing international environment.

From the Young BSF workshop to a strategic framework

The Strategy builds directly on the work of young professionals who participated in YATA Slovenia’s workshop at Young BSF 2026. During the workshop, participants worked across six interconnected domains:

1. 1. Security and Defence;
   2. Democracy and Institutional Resilience;
   3. Technology and the Information Space;
   4. Economic Security and Supply Chains;
   5. Climate and Disaster Resilience;
   6. Societal Cohesion and Youth Agency.

Within each domain, they identified key risks and structural challenges, defined three Strategic Priorities for 2035 and developed three Policy Recommendations.

Following the workshop, YATA Slovenia conducted a structured synthesis of the participant-generated outputs and the plenary discussion. This process joined recurring challenges and priorities, identified areas of convergence and divergence across the six domains, and provided the basis for ten cross-cutting Strategic Principles for Euro-Atlantic Resilience.

As a result, the Strategy maintains a clear connection between the discussions in Kranjska Gora and the final document. The risks, priorities and recommendations originate from the thematic group discussions and were consolidated and edited for clarity, while the ten Strategic Principles represent YATA Slovenia’s cross-cutting synthesis of the work as a whole.

The document is not intended as a consensus statement endorsed in every detail by all participants. Rather, it brings together the perspectives developed through the workshop and organises them into a coherent strategic framework.

Five challenges cutting across the Euro-Atlantic community

Across the six domains, the Strategy identifies five principal challenges that will shape Euro-Atlantic resilience towards 2035.

1. 1. The first is the erosion of trust, social polarisation and institutional legitimacy. Resilience ultimately depends on institutions maintaining public confidence, responding to societal concerns and exercising authority in ways perceived as legitimate and accountable.
   2. The second concerns strategic dependencies and European capacity to act. Economic, technological, energy and security dependencies can become vulnerabilities when access to critical resources, technologies or capabilities is concentrated. At the same time, the Strategy rejects isolation as an answer and instead points towards managed interdependence, diversification and stronger capacity where dependencies become strategically significant.
   3. A third challenge is preparedness, resilience and interconnected security threats. Military threats increasingly interact with vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure, economies, information systems, technologies and societies. Strengthening security therefore requires both credible defence capabilities and broader societal preparedness.
   4. The fourth is information manipulation and technological disruption. Rapid technological development, artificial intelligence and changes in the information environment create new opportunities but also new vulnerabilities for democratic institutions and societies. Addressing them requires stronger institutional capabilities alongside long-term investment in digital, media and AI literacy.
   5. Finally, the Strategy identifies climate change and systemic vulnerability as a challenge with economic, social, security and geopolitical consequences. Climate resilience therefore cannot be separated from questions of energy security, competitiveness, infrastructure, disaster preparedness and social cohesion.

Taken together, these challenges demonstrate why resilience cannot be addressed within individual policy areas alone. They require a framework that connects security, democratic legitimacy, economic capacity, technological change, environmental pressures and societal resilience.

Ten principles for Euro-Atlantic resilience

To provide such a framework, the Strategy sets out ten Strategic Principles for Euro-Atlantic Resilience.

1. 1. Legitimacy through Consistency, Accountability and the Rule of Law;
   2. Trust as a Foundation of Resilience;
   3. Security as a Shared and Comprehensive Responsibility;
   4. Strategic Resilience without Isolation;
   5. Capacity to Act with Coherence and Agility;
   6. Partnerships Based on Reciprocity and Diversification;
   7. An Adaptive and Balanced Transatlantic Relationship;
   8. Inclusion and Agency at Every Level;
   9. Values with Pragmatic and Context-Sensitive Engagement;
   10. Shared Responsibility for Long-Term Transformation.

Together, these principles provide a common framework for the Strategic Priorities and Policy Recommendations developed across the six domains. They are intended to help navigate central tensions facing the Euro-Atlantic community: openness and resilience, capacity and accountability, continuity and adaptation, and values and pragmatic engagement.

One central idea running through them is that greater resilience should not mean withdrawal. The Strategy instead calls for so-called managed interdependence: preserving openness and cooperation while diversifying relationships and reducing dependencies that create critical strategic vulnerabilities.

From principles to priorities and action

The Strategy follows a deliberate progression from identifying challenges to proposing action.

The Key Risks and Structural Challenges establish what needs to be addressed. The Strategic Principles provide a common framework for approaching those challenges. The Strategic Priorities for 2035 define the direction of change across the six domains, while the Policy Recommendations provide practical pathways towards those priorities. Each set of recommendations is accompanied by Indicators of Progress, providing a basis for assessing whether implementation is moving in the intended direction.

In security and defence, the Strategy calls for stronger defence capabilities and whole-of-society resilience, a more coherent and inclusive Euro-Atlantic security architecture, and greater European responsibility within an adaptive transatlantic partnership.

In democracy and institutional resilience, the emphasis is on safeguarding institutional integrity and the rule of law, strengthening resilience against external interference and rebuilding democratic trust through meaningful participation.

For technology and the information space, priorities include protecting trust and integrity in the information environment, strengthening collective detection and response and making digital, media and AI literacy a long-term component of societal resilience.

In economic security, the Strategy points towards trusted and diversified economic partnerships, stronger European cooperation and more resilient supply chains, and greater capacity for strategic economic decision-making.

For climate and disaster resilience, it calls for a green transition that supports resilience, prosperity, and competitiveness, accounts for territorial and social differences, and is backed by sustainable financing for mitigation, adaptation, and disaster preparedness.

Finally, in societal cohesion and youth agency, the Strategy emphasises rebuilding social trust and institutional responsiveness, strengthening accessible public services and creating meaningful pathways through which young people can assume responsibility and contribute to decision-making.

Young professionals as a source of strategic capacity

 Youth agency shapes the Strategy’s understanding of how resilient institutions and societies should operate.

The Strategy argues that young professionals should be recognised as a present source of strategic capacity, rather than only as future leaders or beneficiaries of decisions made today. Their contribution can include substantive participation in decision-making, responsibility for projects and initiatives, the application of expertise and innovation, and the ability to connect generations, institutions and societies.

This approach also reflects how the Strategy itself was developed. The workshop at Young BSF placed young professionals in the position of identifying risks, setting priorities and developing policy recommendations. The Strategy carries those contributions beyond the event and into a wider policy discussion.

From rupture to agency

The Young Euro-Atlantic Resilience Strategy 2035 does not attempt to predict what the international environment will look like a decade from now. Instead, it sets out a framework to strengthen the Euro-Atlantic community’s ability to respond to uncertainty and transformation.

Its objective is an order that is more resilient without becoming isolated, more capable without compromising democratic accountability, and more adaptable while retaining the principles on which its legitimacy depends.

For YATA Slovenia, the publication also marks the completion of a process that began with a question posed to young professionals in Kranjska Gora:

“what must be defended, what should be adapted and what needs to be rethought?”

The Strategy brings their work together into one response to that question. Its central message is that the future of the Euro-Atlantic order should not be approached simply as something to be preserved or as something determined by external developments. Resilience also requires the ability to shape change.

The objective towards 2035 is therefore to move from rupture to agency: strengthening the capacity to defend what remains essential, adapt what must change and rethink what no longer meets the demands of the strategic environment.

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