The European Commission wants to analyse the emerging underlying trends - the acceleration of technological change, the evolution of work, growing urbanisation, rising social or demographic inequalities, scarcity of raw materials, etc. - in order to better anticipate the future and to integrate this reflection into its daily action.
“The future cannot be predicted, especially in today's world of rapid and complex changes”, said European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič, presenting the European institution’s first Strategic Foresight Report on Wednesday, 9 September, one week before Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's State of the Union address.
He also added: “What does make sense is to constantly keep an eye on the horizon, to spot early signs of emerging challenges, to assess their likelihood, or risks and to integrate this knowledge into our action”.
The Commission will henceforth include strategic foresight in every major legislative proposal. On Tuesday, Mr Šefčovič had listed some major initiatives to some media, including EUROPE: the introduction of new climate targets, the follow-up to the safety of the Union, the European consumer agenda, the European strategy for the pharmaceutical sector, the White Paper on Artificial Intelligence (AI), the sustainable use of pesticides.
Resilience. If it had already put in place a strategic foresight approach, would Europe have been better prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic? “Unfortunately, yes,”, believes Šefčovič, who said that the pandemic has exposed some of the EU’s vulnerabilities, including dependence on international trading partners for the supply of vital goods and materials.
“Resilience”, he said, the ability to resist a crisis and bounce back afterwards, must become a “new compass” for the European Union.
Other areas of investigation for the Commission: to feed into the reflection on how the EU can strengthen its autonomy while remaining open to trade, how to better map and plan the green transition and how to strengthen synergies between the green and digital transitions. It will also be a question for the European institution to go beyond GDP as an indicator of wealth creation in order to better analyse the level of well-being of Europeans.
In order to feed into its foresight work, the Commission intends to set up a European network bringing together the best national and international experts from administrations, think tanks and the academic world. The network will be inaugurated in November at the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) conference, which is to become an annual event.
See the 2020 outlook report: https://bit.ly/35lXi0X (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)