ESPAS Conference 2020: Building the future of EU strategic foresight, 18 November 2020

Day 1: Building a more resilient Europe in an uncertain world
After the European Commission’s first Annual Strategic Foresight Report - Building the future of EU strategic foresight

Keynote address:
• Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President for Inter-institutional Relations and Foresight, European Commission.

15.05 Embedding strategic foresight into policy-making - Best practice:
• Jyrki Katainen, former Prime Minister of Finland and former Vice-President of the European Commission.

15.15 Messages of support for the EU foresight network:
• Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister, Spain (video message);
• Peter Altmaier, Federal Minister of Economy and Energy, Germany (video message);
• Ana Paula Zacarias, Secretary of State for European Affairs, Portugal (video message);
• Karoline Edtstadler, Federal Minister for the EU and Constitution, Austria (live);
• Angel Gurria, Secretary-General, OECD (video message).

15.35 In conversation:
• Maroš Šefčovič, Vice-President for Inter-institutional Relations and Foresight, European Commission.

Moderator:
• Michael Peel, EU Diplomatic Correspondent, Financial Times.

Conference: ESPAS Annual Conference, Thinking about the Future: Europe's Road to 2030, Online, 18 - 19 November 2020

Link to conference website:

Link to ESPAS:

About ESPAS:
The European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) provides a framework for cooperation and consultation at administrative level, on a voluntary basis, between the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and the European External Action Service, with the European Investment Bank, the Committee of the Regions, the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Institute for Security Studies and the European Court of Auditors as observers, to work together on medium- and long-term trends facing or relating to the European Union.

Building on the success of ESPAS in identifying global trends in recent years, together with the impetus the project has given to the development of foresight across the European institutions, the 2020 ESPAS Conference explored how to strengthen the link between global trends analysis and the practical needs of EU policy-making.

The purpose of the ESPAS Conference was to engage in a broad-ranging conversation with policy analysts and foresight experts in governments, think tanks, universities and many other organisations on what matters in this fast-moving field. The current crisis has underlined the importance of foresight in effective policy-making and we hope that the conference can contribute to that process.