Strategic foresight report 2023

Background

This opinion aims to contribute to further developing foresight in EU policy-making and to provide feedback to the European Commission's 2023 Annual foresight Report, which focused on sustainability and people's wellbeing at the heart of Europe's Open Strategic Autonomy.

With the opinion, the EESC is also contributing to the ongoing EU debate on open strategic autonomy and the priorities for the new European Commission after the June European elections and is making sure that its views are integrated in the new EU policy-making cycle.

Key points

The EESC:

• recognises foresight as important in supporting decision-making processes and notes the efforts at EU level to assign foresight a strategic institutional role and to consider it in the EU decision-making. The EESC calls for foresight to remain high in the agenda of the new Commission.
• calls for greater involvement for the EESC, as the voice of organised civil society and social partners, to enhance the EU's analysis and foresight capacities and help pinpoint trends and possible solutions in a transformative society.
• agrees with the Commission's approach to identify options for new economic models that are feasible and impactful, with a view to ensuring inclusive and sustainable competitiveness that maintains a high level of social and environmental protection, good quality jobs, and fair and solidarity-based conditions that preserve the European model of a highly competitive social market economy.
• calls for a renewed and expanded EU industrial policy aimed at coordinating decisions and interventions to increase coherence among sectors and among Member States towards sustainable competitiveness for the EU.
• calls for complementary indicators to GDP to be identified and translated into policy measures.
• calls on the EU and national institutions, the private sector and local stakeholders to work on defining and adopting a new European social contract fit, as included in the 2023 Strategic Foresight Report.
• asks the EU and Member States to join efforts to ensure the provision of EU public goods, including by adapting the EU budget to the new scenario. Commodities and services that will safeguard defence, security (e.g. in food systems, water, energy supply and distribution, the economy, R&I, access to information and strategic infrastructure), health, education and well-being are crucial to enable the EU's "comprehensive resilience ecosystem" to achieve and maintain sustainable and inclusive competitiveness and democracy.

Additional information

Section: Single Market, Production and Consumption (INT)

Opinion number: INT/1039

Opinion type: Optional

Referral: COM(2023) 376 final

Rapporteur: Stefano Palmieri (Group II - Italy)

Co-rapporteur: Gonçalo Lobo Xavier (Group I - Portugal)

Date of adoption by section: 11 April 2024

Result of the vote: 75 in favour, 0 against, 1 abstention

Date of adoption in plenary: 24-25 April 2024

Result of the vote: 154 in favour, 0 against, 1 abstention

Contact

Marco Pezzani

Press Officer

Tel.: +32 2 546 9793 | Mob: +32 470 881 903

E-mail: marco.pezzani@eesc.europa.eu

Raúl Muriel Carrasco

Administrator

Tel.: +32 546 8270

E-mail: raul.murielcarrasco@eesc.europa.eu