Strategic foresight at the EESC

Strategic foresight is a future-focused discipline that aims to anticipate and address emerging challenges and opportunities. It involves analysing long-term trends, identifying drivers of change, and exploring potential disruptions that could shape societal, economic, political, environmental and technological developments.

Unlike traditional forecasting, strategic foresight is not about predicting a single future. Instead, it helps us understand what is changing and explore different alternative futures to prepare for change and ensure that decisions made today consider long-term effects as they shape the world of tomorrow.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) applies strategic foresight to better navigate the complex and rapidly evolving landscapes of EU policymaking. By engaging its members and networks of civil society organisations, the EESC brings a key participatory dimension to EU foresight, helping to detect weak signals and underlying trends to develop better coordinated and effective policy responses.

In practical terms, the EESC regularly issues opinions on  Strategic Foresight Reports, and commissions forward-looking studies to support the development of evidence-based policies. Moreover, the EESC engages in collaborative foresight exercises with other EU bodies and civil society organisations, and contributes to the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) and its foresight papers and reports. A recent example is an Ideas Paper that imagines how green and digital transitions could impact the role of organised civil society in the EU by 2050.