This science for policy brief documents the process and findings of a horizon scanning exercise, part of a series under the FUTURINNOV (FUTURe-oriented detection and assessment of emerging technologies and break-through INNOVation) project, a collaboration between the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC), aiming to bolster the EIC's strategic intelligence through foresight and anticipatory methodologies.
The workshop, held on 13 November 2024, had as its primary goal the evaluation and prioritisation of trends and signals on emerging technologies and breakthrough innovation, across all technology readiness levels (TRLs), within the digital and network security domain. Signals for the workshop were gathered from experts, literature review, and text/data mining of patents, publications, and EU-funded projects.
These signals were then scrutinised for their significance to the field's future by a diverse group of sector experts which led to the identification of eight key topics: deepfake detection, quantum-resistant algorithms, interoperability for end-to-end encrypted messaging systems, privacy and security in virtual reality, false data injection attack detection, inter-satellite communication, privacy-preserving machine learning, and tiny solar-powered drones capable of near-perpetual flight.
Participants also highlighted various factors that could influence the development, adoption, and promotion of these emerging technologies including: tensions between privacy and security, emerging geopolitical threats, technological and regulatory enablers, trust and transparency, and the economic barriers that shape technological development and adoption.

Source: European Commission - Press Corner - 2023 Strategic Foresight Report 

The EU is engaged in a profound and ambitious transition to achieve climate neutrality and sustainability in the next few decades. This sustainability transition will be key to strengthen the EU's Open Strategic Autonomy, ensure its long-term competitiveness, uphold its social market economy model and consolidate its global leadership in the new net-zero economy. To succeed, the EU will need to address several challenges and make choices that will affect our societies and economies at an unprecedented pace and scale.

The 2023 report provides an overview of the challenges we face and proposes ten areas for action to achieve a successful transition. To equip policymakers with economic indicators which also consider wellbeing, it proposes to adjust Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to take account of different factors such as health and the environment.

This approach will bolster the EU's Open Strategic Autonomy and global standing in its pursuit of a resilient net-zero economy.

Overcoming key social and economic challenges

As it goes through the sustainability transition – which encompasses both economic and social sustainability ­– the EU is facing several challenges. For example:

• Evolving geopolitical shifts are shaping public opinion and how governments across the globe act, challenging international cooperation on global issues, such as climate change or the energy transition.
• The need for a new economic model, focused on the wellbeing of people and nature, decoupling economic growth from resource use and shifting to more sustainable production and consumption. Up to 75% of Eurozone businesses are highly dependent on natural resources. Economic, social and environmental sustainability are inextricably linked.
• Growing demand for adequate skills for a sustainable future. The availability of workers equipped with appropriate technical and soft skills will be crucial for the EU's competitiveness: 85% of EU firms today lack staff with the competences needed to navigate the green and digital transitions.
• The sustainability transition requires unprecedented investments. Achieving it will depend on securing sufficient funding both from the public and private sectors.

Ten areas for action
Today's report identifies ten areas where our policy response is needed to ensure that the sustainability transition remains focused on the wellbeing of people and society:

1. Ensure a new European social contract with renewed welfare policies and a focus on high-quality social services.
2. Deepen the Single Market to champion a resilient net-zero economy, with a focus on Open Strategic Autonomy and economic security.
3. Boost the EU's offer on the global stage to strengthen cooperation with key partners.
4. Support shifts in production and consumption towards sustainability, targeting regulation and fostering balanced lifestyles.
5. Move towards a ‘Europe of investments' through public action to catalyse financial flows for the transitions.
6. Make public budgets fit for sustainability through an efficient tax framework and public spending.
7. Further shift policy and economic indicators towards sustainable and inclusive wellbeing, including by adjusting GDP for different factors.
8. Ensure that all Europeans can contribute to the transition by increasing labour market participation and focusing on future skills.
9. Strengthen democracy with generational fairness at the heart of policymaking to reinforce the support for the transitions.
10. Complement civil protection with ‘civil prevention' by reinforcing the EU's toolbox on preparedness and response.

Source: European Commission: Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Strategic foresight in the Western Balkans – Recovery on the horizon, Publications Office of the European Union, 2021 

The report outlines three scenarios on the possible futures of Research and Innovation (R&I) policies in the Western Balkans in 2035. Using a Strategic Foresight approach, the report supports policy-makers in creating an enabling environment for R&I policies to thrive and decide on priorities for strategic investments for the future. The scenarios in the report are rooted in an extensive co-creation process with more than 700 experts on R&I from the Western Balkans, who represent academia, civil society, the private sector, international organisations as well as central and subnational governments. In order to provide inspiration to implement future-proof policies on R&I, the report moreover entails initial roadmaps. These seek to inspire decision makers by pinpointing goals and their required actions to further develop their R&I systems for the benefits of all citizens in the Western Balkans.

This report documents the process and findings of a horizon scanning exercise, part of a series under the FUTURINNOV (FUTURe-oriented detection and assessment of emerging technologies and breakthrough INNOVation) project, a collaboration between the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC), aiming to bolster the EIC's strategic intelligence through foresight and anticipatory methodologies.
The workshop, held on 16 October 2024, had as its primary goal the evaluation and prioritisation of trends and signals on emerging technologies and breakthrough innovation, across all tech7-nology readiness levels (TRLs), within the broad Mobility domain, broken-down into four key areas: transport systems, networks and multimodality; automotive and roads; rail/freight and logistics and aviation and airports.
Signals for the workshop were gathered from experts, literature review, and text/data mining of patents, publications, and EU-funded projects. These signals were then scrutinised for their significance to the field's future by a diverse group of sector experts which led to the identification of 22 different key topics across the key areas above. These signals can be seen as hotspots of innovation that deserve the EIC’s attention for possible future support.
Participants also highlighted various factors that could influence the development, adoption, and promotion of these emerging technologies, which are presented in the report as drivers, enablers and barriers, and analysed specifically in each of the 4 key areas.

Foresight, it seems to be on everyone’s lips these days. But what is it exactly? And more importantly, how can policymakers use it in their daily work? These are the kinds of questions we at the EU Policy Lab (a unit of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre) often receive from people who are interested in foresight but are not exactly sure what it is and what it can do for them. 

Where to start
To help them out, we have developed a ‘foresight menu’, for policymakers to understand and leverage foresight for more effective strategy building and decision-making. The menu describes various reasons why you would use foresight and guides the reader towards some of the tools/processes they can use. It will help policymakers clarify their starting point, their goals, and help them make the right choice about which foresight activities and processes are best suited to them.

How does it work?
Foresight - the discipline of exploring, anticipating, and shaping the future in a participatory way – can provide insights for future-oriented decision-making in many different sectors and for many different actors, not only policymakers. It seeks to navigate uncertainty and explore possible and preferable futures, not with the purpose of predicting the future, but with the intent to generate a wide variety of views on the future and understand emerging change and future possibilities.

To help anyone starting off with foresight, we first outlined the types of goals for which foresight can be used along with their corresponding foresight tools. These goals range from mapping drivers of change, understanding possible developments and changes over time to creating and exploring alternative or preferred futures and developing actions to get closer to those futures. All these foresight 'pillars' represent different steps that can be individual activities or can be part of a comprehensive foresight process.  

Help shape Europe’s future! 🛡️ 

To build the smart policies of tomorrow, we are counting on your insights for the 2025 Strategic Foresight Report. Together we can build a strong and resilient Europe that is fit for future challenges.
This goes beyond security - it’s about democracy, well-being, the economy, climate, competitiveness, sustainability, fairness between generations, and more.
We need your expertise now! The call for evidence is open for feedback on the citizens engagement platform until March 19th. 

👉 2025 Strategic Foresight Report 

This report explores the transformative potential of Key Enabling Technologies in addressing
emerging security challenges within the European Union. By conducting foresight analysis, the report
evaluates technologies such as artificial intelligence, advanced sensing, blockchain, and drones,
highlighting their ability to enhance law enforcement and critical infrastructure resilience, and fighting
crime and terrorism, while exposing vulnerabilities, such as misuse by criminal actors or regulatory
gaps.
The findings emphasise the need for proactive EU policies to both support technology transformation
and mitigate risks, including strategic investments in secure innovation, legal harmonisation, and
addressing societal resilience. This report aligns with the Commission’s 2024–2029 priorities,
supporting a prosperous, secure, and resilient Europe through actionable insights into emerging
security challenges. The recommendations aim to foster effective public-private collaborations,
ensure regulatory coherence across Member States, and promote technological solutions that balance
security needs with ethical and societal values, reinforcing the EU’s position as a leader in sustainable,
innovation-driven policy-making in internal security. 

This report explores the transformative potential of Key Enabling Technologies in addressing emerging security challenges within the European Union. By conducting foresight analysis, the report evaluates technologies such as artificial intelligence, advanced sensing, blockchain, and drones, highlighting their ability to enhance law enforcement and critical infrastructure resilience, and fighting crime and terrorism, while exposing vulnerabilities, such as misuse by criminal actors or regulatory gaps.
The findings emphasise the need for proactive EU policies to both support technology transformation and mitigate risks, including strategic investments in secure innovation, legal harmonisation, and addressing societal resilience. This report aligns with the Commission’s 2024–2029 priorities, supporting a prosperous, secure, and resilient Europe through actionable insights into emerging security challenges. The recommendations aim to foster effective public-private collaborations, ensure regulatory coherence across Member States, and promote technological solutions that balance security needs with ethical and societal values, reinforcing the EU’s position as a leader in sustainable, innovation-driven policy-making in internal security.

The European Foresight Monitoring Network (EFMN) is an initiative inspired and financed by the European Commission and was started in 2004 as a service to foresight practitioners and policy makers in Europe and beyond.

This report documents the process and findings of a horizon scanning exercise, part of a series under
the FUTURINNOV (FUTURe-oriented detection and assessment of emerging technologies and break-
through INNOVation) project, a collaboration between the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the
Joint Research Centre (JRC), aiming to bolster the EIC's strategic intelligence through foresight and
anticipatory methodologies.

The workshop, held on 17 September 2024, had as its primary goal the evaluation and prioritisation
of trends and signals on emerging technologies and breakthrough innovation, across all technology
readiness levels (TRLs), within the EIC's Medical Imaging and AI portfolio.
Signals for the workshop were gathered from experts, literature review, and text/data mining of pa-
tents, publications, and EU-funded projects. These signals were then scrutinised for their significance
to the field's future by a diverse group of sector experts which led to the identification of eight key
topics: generative AI for healthcare; digital twins; multimodal data analysis; explainable AI in medical
imaging; application of AI to specific diseases/conditions; XR - augmented and virtual realities; tensor-
valued diffusion encoding, and AI-generated synthetic data for training AI. Furthermore, the workshop
identified additional wild cards with high novelty and disruptive potential such as: blockchain, edge
computing and differential privacy for secure, AI-driven medical imaging and collaborative healthcare
optimisation and quantum medical imaging.

Participants also highlighted various factors that could influence the development, adoption, and pro-
motion of these emerging technologies, which can be grouped under the following categories: Tech-
nological advancements and cross-sector applications; data infrastructure, AI models, and regulatory
frameworks; workforce, education and societal factors; clinical efficiency and patient outcomes; trust,
ethics, and AI adoption; financial pressures and industry investment in AI healthcare.

The EU Policy Lab is a space for cross-disciplinary exploration and innovation in policymaking. We apply collaborative, systemic and forward-looking approaches to help bringing the scientific knowledge of the Joint Research Centre into EU policymaking.

We experiment with the new, the unprecedented and the unknown. We seek to augment our understanding of the present, challenge and reinvent the way we think about the future.

The EU Policy Lab is also a mindset and a way of working together that combines stories and data, anticipation and analysis, imagination and action. We bring new practical and radical perspectives to tackle complex problems in a collaborative way. Together, we explore, connect and ideate to create better policies.

The Competence Centre on Foresight is part of the EU Policy Lab and supports EU policy making by providing strategic and future-oriented input, developing an anticipatory culture inside the European Commission, and continuously experimenting and developing different methods and tools to make foresight useful for decision making processes. 

We organise a series of four workshops: the first three are devoted to devise scenarios, while the fourth one will derive policy implications.

On behalf of the European Commission, DG Research and Innovation, the “Foresight on Demand” consortium is conducting a foresight-like project “European R&I foresight and public engagement for Horizon Europe”. Eight deep-dive studies are to be conducted in 2023, leading to policy briefs to support European Union and national policy-makers. One of these topics is the “Futures of interpenetration of criminal and lawful economic activities” with a time horizon of 2040.

Please express your interest to contribute to building scenarios on the “Futures of interpenetration of criminal and lawful economic activities” by filling in the form below. This Deep Dive project considers – among other issues – the possibility of identifying, differentiating, and controlling criminal and lawful economic activities, the relevant trend and drivers shaping the possible futures for the interpenetration of these activities, the level of control technically feasible and socially and economically desirable to fight the interpenetration of criminal economic activities. The policy brief will highlight the major implications for EU and national policy-makers, with an emphasis on research and innovation policies.

We organise a series of four workshops: the first three of those are devoted to devise scenarios, while the fourth one will derive policy implications:

• the 1st scenario WS is to be held from 10:00 to 13:00 on 12 June 2023,
• the 2nd scenario WS is to be held from 16:30 to 19:30 on 26 June 2023,
• the 3rd scenario WS is to be held from 16:00 to 18:00 on 31 July 2023,
• the policy implications WS is to be held from 16:00 to 18:00 on 4 September 2023.

We organise a series of four workshops: the first three are devoted to devise scenarios, while the fourth one will derive policy implications.

On behalf of the European Commission, DG Research and Innovation, the “Foresight on Demand” consortium is conducting a foresight-like project “European R&I foresight and public engagement for Horizon Europe”. Eight deep-dive studies are to be conducted in 2023, leading to policy briefs to support European Union and national policy-makers. One of these topics is the “Futures of interpenetration of criminal and lawful economic activities” with a time horizon of 2040.

Please express your interest to contribute to building scenarios on the “Futures of interpenetration of criminal and lawful economic activities” by filling in the form below. This Deep Dive project considers – among other issues – the possibility of identifying, differentiating, and controlling criminal and lawful economic activities, the relevant trend and drivers shaping the possible futures for the interpenetration of these activities, the level of control technically feasible and socially and economically desirable to fight the interpenetration of criminal economic activities. The policy brief will highlight the major implications for EU and national policy-makers, with an emphasis on research and innovation policies.

We organise a series of four workshops: the first three of those are devoted to devise scenarios, while the fourth one will derive policy implications:

• the 1st scenario WS is to be held from 10:00 to 13:00 on 12 June 2023,
• the 2nd scenario WS is to be held from 16:30 to 19:30 on 26 June 2023,
• the 3rd scenario WS is to be held from 16:00 to 18:00 on 31 July 2023,
• the policy implications WS is to be held from 16:00 to 18:00 on 4 September 2023.

This event will bring together participants from a Mutual Learning Exercise on R&I Foresight supported by the European Commission, with other policymakers, experts and interested stakeholders to discuss the lessons and takeaways from the year long process.

The Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) on R&I Foresight was launched in July 2022 at the request of Member States supported by DG Research and Innovation of the European Commission. Nine countries (Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Portugal, Romania, and Slovenia), the European Commission and a team of foresight experts, have been actively involved.

The aim of the MLE was to facilitate the exchange of information, experiences and lessons from the practice of R&I foresight across EU and Associated Countries, in order to contribute to the development of an impactful R&I foresight community as an important element of the European Research Area.

Location: Estonian Permanent Representation , Rue Guimard 11, 1040 Bruxelles, Belgium

Sharing lessons learned in foresight practices and experiences is important for the exchange for an impactful foresight community. The Mutual Learning Exercise can help foster community building and foresight capacities in different member states.

Decision makers are faced with a world characterised by increasing turbulence, uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity. These conditions make it more difficult to assess risks when making strategic decisions or planning for the long-term. This project from the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) EU Policy Lab starting 2023 presents a foresight approach to increase preparedness for unexpected developments and the risks they could create.

Foresight methods offer a way to consider and focus on risks that may be beyond the scope of traditional quantitative and qualitative risk assessment approaches. Several snapshots of the future depict different worlds that have undergone substantial changes as a consequence of emerging developments. An analysis of the risks inherent in the possible futures identified ten risk clusters that are relevant for decision makers, and mapped future developments that might lead to them.The same development pathways that could lead to risks can also create opportunities, and the study provides some examples. Decision makers face the challenge of mitigating the adverse effects of risks, while reaping the benefits of potential opportunities. This study also presents the results of a Delphi survey that evaluated the scope and severity of risks. Three of the 40 risks identified in this study were assessed to be potentially existential for humanity: 1) environmental degradation, 2) environmental disasters, and 3) loss of power by humans. The project started in 2023 and will run until 2024.

Download the Risks on the horizon report  

Read the blog post from the authors  

The Polycrisis Exploration Workshop

The Polycrisis tool draws on insights from the Risks on the horizon foresight study. Collective intelligence exercises such as this can bring new knowledge and broader perspectives into policy making, sparking new ideas, and helping to co-create impactful interdisciplinary solutions. The workshop facilitates strategic conversations about current and future risks, disasters, and polycrisis. 

You can use the tool to:
• Enhance risk awareness by exploring a broad spectrum of risks
• Map future polycrisis and explore their interconnected and cascading impacts in your area of work
• Identify policy interventions to mitigate risks. 

Read instructions and download the materials

Read more from EU Policy Lab blog
 

S+T+ARTS is an initiative of the European Commission, launched under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme to support collaborations between artists, scientists, engineers and researchers.

MISSION
Science, technology and arts (STARTS for short) limn a nexus at which insightful observers have identified extraordinarily high potential for innovation. And innovation is precisely what’s called for if we’re to master the social, ecological and economic challenges that Europe will be facing in the near future. With the S+T+ARTS initiative, the European Commission’s focus is on projects and people that have the potential to make meaningful contributions to this effort.

VISION
S+T+ARTS is driven by the conviction that science and technology combined with an artistic viewpoint also open valuable perspectives for research and business, through a holistic and human-centered approach.

STRATEGY
S+T+ARTS is sustained by the STARTS Pillars that represent all the dimensions STARTS works with. Different funded projects offer complementary opportunities and services.