2020 Strategic Foresight Report

Strategic Foresight and EU policy-making

Embedding strategic foresight into the EU policy-making will enable the European Commission to:

• build and use collective intelligence to anticipate developments and prepare for new opportunities and challenges earlier and more effectively;
• ensure strategic foresight becomes an integral part of the Better Regulation toolbox, including ex ante impact assessments, and supports the Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme;
• undertake in-depth and participatory foresight exercises on major initiatives aimed at informing the annual State of the Union address, Commission Work Programmes and multi-annual programming exercises;
• foster foresight cooperation and alliances with EU institutions and partners, Member States and other key stakeholders.

Resilience as a new compass for EU policies

The COVID-19 crisis has made clear that Europe needs to enhance its resilience – which is the ability not only to withstand and cope with challenges but also to undergo transitions in a sustainable, fair and democratic manner. This Communication shows how forward-looking policies supported by strategic foresight will contribute to this.

Strategic foresight can inform resilience-enhancing policies across four dimensions. It can help anticipate developments likely to have adverse impacts, to strengthen corresponding resilience through structural changes as well as taking into account the impact of current and future crises on relevant megatrends and emerging issues. Policies benefiting from strategic foresight can better mitigate the vulnerabilities and strengthen the capacities revealed by the crisis, opening new opportunities and making Europe more resilient.

Key findings

Strategic Foresight Agenda

The 2020 Strategic Foresight Report shows that action-driven strategic foresight is uniquely suited to inform decision-makers to drive the twin transitions and strengthen the EU’s resilience. For this purpose, this Communication presents as next steps:

• resilience dashboards as a new tool to monitor resilience. They have been further developed and co-created in discussions with Member States and other key stakeholders. The focus of this work is on the medium-to-long-term, to give the best conditions for foresight-informed policies to mitigate vulnerabilities and strengthen capacities.
• the Commission Strategic Foresight Agenda, supporting overarching political priorities. It will include ad-hoc foresight exercises to inform major initiatives planned in the Commission Work Programme as well as crosscutting issues identified as high impact. Examples could include: Open strategic autonomy, the future of green jobs and skills, and deepening the twinning of the green and digital transitions across all policies and strategies
• the annual ESPAS conference, which took place in November 2020. The Commission will used this opportunity to discuss the topic of the 2021 Strategic Foresight Report. The Commission also used the ESPAS conference to launch an EU-wide Foresight Network with Member State public foresight capabilities, think tanks, academia, industry stakeholders and civil society.
• Foresight scenarios to inform future policy debate, to ensure coherence across policies, and to serve as a shared, forward‑looking framework for policy proposals. These scenarios will help identify potential pathways for the twin transition. This exercise can also contribute to the Conference on the Future of Europe.

Next steps

• The annual European Strategy and Political Analysis System (ESPAS) conference
• Further development of resilience dashboards
• 2021 Annual Strategic Foresight Report
• Implementation of a Strategic Foresight Agenda

Contact

For any enquiries, please contact us at SG-FORESIGHTec [dot] europa [dot] eu (SG-FORESIGHT[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu); JRC-FORESIGHTec [dot] europa [dot] eu (JRC-FORESIGHT[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)

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