On Thursday 5 March, the European Commission adopted its first Strategy on Intergenerational Fairness with the aim of ensuring that the needs and expectations of young people, as well as older people, are taken into account in the development of EU policies.
“The EU’s overarching goal is to guarantee that current decisions are made with the future in mind, ensuring a fair balance of benefits and burdens across all generations”, says a press release.
“At the heart of this Strategy is a simple image: ‘the empty chair’ at the table. The chair that represents those not yet born, or those too young to speak for themselves, but whose lives we are shaping through our decisions. Our responsibility is clear: today’s decisions must not become tomorrow’s burdens”, explained Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu.
The strategy is based on the concept of an ‘Intergenerational Contract’, built on a threefold foundation: - fair policymaking, by applying a ‘youth check’ and foresight tools; - fair opportunities, to address the risks of age discrimination; - fair places, so that the region you are born in doesn’t define your future.
Among other things, the strategy puts in place an ‘Intergenerational Fairness Index’ to identify opportunities and gaps, and a set of multilingual measures to support the development of foresight skills within Member States’ public administrations.
“Intergenerational fairness may sound abstract, but it is not. (...) Several countries, including some of our own Member States, have already embedded it into their institutions by thinking long-term”, commented Roxana Mînzatu.
“Finland has the ‘Committee for the Future’, a permanent parliamentary body that institutionalises foresight into governance. Spain has a ‘National Office of Foresight and Strategy’ that coordinates the ‘Spain 2050’ roadmap, aligning current policies with long-term intergenerational targets”.
In addition, many EU Member States are carrying out “specific Regulatory Impact Assessments on youth and/or future generations: Austria, Belgium-Flanders, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden”.
Link to the communication: https://aeur.eu/f/l12 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)