The EESC:
2021 Annual Foresight Report - Related Opinions
On 9 September 2020, the European Commission adopted its first annual Strategic Foresight Report, presenting Commission’s strategy to integrate strategic foresight into EU policy-making. Strategic foresight aims to identify emerging challenges and opportunities to better steer the European Union's strategic choices and to inform major policy initiatives. It will support the Commission in designing future-proof policies and legislation that serves both the current needs and longer-term aspirations of European citizens.
The EESC would like a vigorous SME-friendly initiative (Act Small First) to be implemented with a view to achieving this objective, and calls for the Think small first principle and the SME test to be evaluated. The goal here will be to make these tools more effective and to design SME-compatible legislation so that SMEs can develop within the single market on the basis of complete legal certainty...
The aim of this own-initiative opinion is to assess the existing methods of stakeholder consultation carried out by the European Commission in accordance with Article 11(3) TEU. On the basis of this assessment, the opinion sets out proposals that are intended to be constructive and realistic, with a view to structurally enhancing and monitoring the consultation process in the interest of all parties.