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

The workshop, held online on 15 May 2025, had as its primary goal the evaluation and prioritisation of trends and signals related to emerging technologies and breakthrough innovation, across all technology readiness levels (TRLs), within cell and gene therapies.

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 seven key topics: in vivo gene therapy; microphysiological pre-clinical models; stem cells in multiple applications; new tools for advanced tissue delivery; in silico & AI; conversion of tumour cells; and emerging genome and epigenome-based therapies.

Participants also highlighted various contextual factors that could influence the development, adoption, and uptake of emerging technologies within this field, including in domains such as: competitiveness and geopolitics; talent and expertise; cross-border and cross-sector collaboration; funding, economic and market conditions; regulatory, safety and ethical challenges; health and RDI ecosystems; and infrastructure and manufacturing.

This is the fourth ESPAS (European Strategy and Policy Analysis System) global trends report since the establishment of this inter-institutional EU foresight process in the early 2010s. As on previous occasions, it is being published in a year when the European Union embarks on a new five-year institutional cycle. The report analyses the key global trends towards the year 2040 and their possible impact on the Union, and sets out some strategic choices and questions that Europe's leaders may need to address in the coming five years and beyond. The report is the product of a unique collaborative process over the past year involving officials from across the nine ESPAS institutions and bodies.

The report sets the centrality of geopolitics as a transversal trend, given the on-going shift from an era of cooperation to an era of competition as well as the deepening fragmentation of the international system and the acceleration of major global transitions. The Report highlights how the borders between EU internal policy and external policy are blurring nowadays and will probably blur even more in the future. The primacy of geopolitics is outlined across the various trends identified in the report: from the economic challenges to demography, from the environmental and climate crisis to the energy transition, from the quest for equality to the technological acceleration, and including health, democracy and the broader changes on how we live.

The publication concludes by outlining the strategic imperatives for the incoming EU leadership. It calls for a multifaceted approach to establish the EU as a smart global power, ensure a socially equitable green transition, navigate economic risks, update the economic model, innovate within a balanced regulatory framework, and strengthen social cohesion.

Between now and 2040, Europe and the world will undergo profound geopolitical, economic, technological and social change. The generation now growing up will live in a world that we can only imagine. However, integrating long-term goals into short to medium-term decision-making can boost our chances of leaving a world that is in better shape to the next generation. The more we understand the challenges ahead, the better we can anticipate and prepare for the changes to come. There are grounds for optimism. The EU has arguably been able to make progress in the past precisely when the challenges seemed overwhelming. When pressed, it can marshal reserves of determination and ingenuity. The next EU leadership will need to draw deeply on these reserves in the years ahead.

Source: EEAS Global Trends to 2040: Choosing Europe’s Future

This report offers an in-depth foresight assessment that critically evaluates and questions the foundational assumptions of European environmental policies related to the Green Deal. To enhance the resilience of these frameworks, the two-year study utilises a comprehensive set of methods, including impact wheel analysis, Ishikawa diagrams, cross-impact analysis, semi-structured interviews, and causal layered analysis. This approach reveals the cascading effects, entrenched cognitive biases, and intricate interdependencies present in policy design. These techniques facilitate a detailed examination of specific policy areas while providing a systemic perspective on how the connections among circular economy, bioeconomy, clean air and health, and the decarbonisation of transport impact overall sustainability results. By harnessing these diverse foresight techniques, the assessment reveals that conventional policy narratives are often oversimplified, obscuring risks and trade-offs that, if unchallenged, may impede a successful transition to a sustainable Europe. The impact wheel and Ishikawa diagrams facilitate the structured identification of primary and secondary effects, while the cross-impact analysis maps the interactive dynamics between assumptions. Semi-structured interviews provide nuanced stakeholder perspectives that uncover underlying worldviews and metaphors shaping policy discourse when synthesised via causal layered analysis. The study offers actionable recommendations for enhancing policy resilience, promoting integrated governance, and fostering adaptive strategies capable of addressing the multipronged challenges posed by environmental uncertainty.

Source: Eionet - ETCs- ETC Sustainability transitions (ETC ST) - Products  

To help navigate current and future uncertainty and disruptive change, while effectively delivering on its mandate, UNEP has been implementing an institutionalized approach to strategic foresight and horizon scanning with the view to developing an anticipatory and future-oriented culture. This mirrors the growing interest and demand for foresight that is also reinforced by the United Nations reform agenda and the Secretary-General’s report on ‘Our Common Agenda’, which calls for all UN agencies, as well as all UN member states, to engage foresight practices more deeply and apply the derived insights to address global systemic risks. This process has culminated in the development of the present report “Navigating New Horizons – A Global Foresight Report on Planetary Health and Human Wellbeing”, produced by UNEP in collaboration with the International Science Council. The report calls for the world to pay heed and respond to a range of emerging challenges that could disrupt planetary health and wellbeing. It presents insights on eight critical global shifts that are accelerating the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity and nature loss and pollution and waste. Eighteen signals of change – identified by hundreds of global experts and distilled through regional and stakeholder consultations that included youth – offer a glimpse into potential disruptions, both positive and negative, that the world needs to keep a watching brief on. 

The report outlines how to create an enabling environment for better decision-making by creating a new social contract, embracing agile and adaptive governance, and increasing integrated accessible data and knowledge. The report offers a stark reminder of the interconnectedness and fragility of our systems in the 21st Century and warns that prioritizing short-term gains over anticipatory action and preparedness jeopardizes long-term prosperity and planetary health. However, it also points to the tremendous potential and human ingenuity that can be leveraged in the spirit of discovery and cooperation to deliver solutions across the triple crisis. The outcomes of the report will be integrated into UNEP’s strategic planning, potentially influencing the next UNEP Medium-Term Strategy, presenting an opportunity to consider expanding programmes in areas like artificial intelligence, new technology, and robotics in agriculture, prompting discussions on the level of engagement in these issues. This will ultimately serve UNEP in adopting a proactive posture and modernize tools for efficiency and cost savings.

Source: UN Environment - Document Repository - Knowledge Repository - UNEP Publications - Technical Reports  

The activities reported in this foresight brief reflect the foresight knowledge in support of the Mission Board and its strategies towards a consolidated mission within the broader goal to fight cancer in the European Union. The support of the FOD Cancer project team consisted of several interactive events with the Mission Board, horizon scanning, and the provision of three specific reports. This synthesis report gives a concise overview of the deliverables, which are provided in full as annexes.

Based on the “Scoping Paper” (Annex I) this synthesis report demonstrates the challenges for future cancer research. It summarises some major aspects behind the urgency of the cancer topic – not only medical aspects but a broader spectrum that includes prevention, prediction, care, diagnosis and treatment as well as other economic and social aspects. The report is the result of a targeted literature review of recent documents where the future of the fight against cancer is discussed. The main goal of the review was to identify and assess both consolidated trends and drivers, and other phenomena at the periphery that are likely to have impacts on the future of cancer. Mission Board members revised the report and gave additional inputs online (since an onsite scoping meeting had to be sacrificed to meet the COVID-19 containment measures).

Building on the outcome of the revised Scoping Paper, two scenarios were developed discussing diverging directions of cancer development and the measures to fight cancer (Annex II). The two future health scenarios were based on scenarios from an earlier EU-funded project entitled "FRESHER - FoResight and Modelling for European HEalth Policy and Regulation", which aimed to identify future research policies to effectively address the burden of noncommunicable diseases (NCD) using emerging health scenarios with a time horizon up to 2050. 

Within the online scenario workshop with members from the Mission Board on ‘Fighting Cancer’ and members from the European Commission, the two FRESHER scenarios were discussed, revised and feedback for desirable futures with regard to fighting cancer was collected. The two scenarios are briefly presented in this report as well. Under the impression of the two scenarios, the Mission Board members and EC representatives were guided by the FOD Cancer team to discuss online in five focus groups - in parallel - different stakeholder perspectives with regard to desirable milestones that may be achieved in the future to make prevention, diagnosis, treatment and survival of cancer more effective. These stakeholder perspectives comprised “Members of the European Parliament against Cancer”, “General Practitioners”, “Pharmaceutical Companies”, “Patient Organisations”, and “Survivors”. Out of these discussions, the FOD team developed three roadmaps (Annex III): milestones for prevention, milestones for diagnosis and treatment, and milestones for survivorship. The roadmaps are also briefly summarised.

COVID-19 has led to a global public health crisis and changed the course of lives for billions with ensuing social and economic damage. A foresight study was commissioned by the European Commission DG RTD in June 2020 that used Dynamic Argumentative Delphi method to explore experts’ views on what Europe may look like in 2023, in the domains relating to medicine, public health, and socio-economic conditions. Using expert responses to the survey, the points of consensus and the areas of divergence (uncertainties) were analysed, and five plausible 'exit scenarios' were developed. The report draws conclusions for EU R&I policy, but together with its data annex, it can support strategic discussions across many different policy fields.

Link to the report: http://doi.org/10.2777/293413

The Covid-19 pandemic has shattered our sense of ‘normal’, and amplified uncertainties and issues at the core of what the future may hold. The project ‘After the new normal: Scenarios for Europe in the post Covid-19 world’ examined possible futures of 2040 for the EU emerging from the crisis of the pandemic, as possible contexts for EU R&I. The five scenarios described in this report chart different possible post-Covid-19 evolution paths, creating new perspectives on key EU R&I policy issues.

Control over technological development

Across all scenarios, the ability of the European Union to exert control over future technological development - through regulation, standardisation, and the enforcement of policy - entails wide ranging socio-economic implications for the broader society.

The EU share of global R&D is shrinking, and there is an unavoidable, growing EU dependence on technologies developed and produced elsewhere in the world, most notably in the US or China. There is also an ever-increasing influence of private firms on technological development, including large multinationals, which remain largely outside public control as regards potential societal consequences of the deployment of those technologies. The challenges these trends may pose to the ability of the EU to exercise control over technological development will depend on the speed of the recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and on the character of the relationships that will be built during the recovery effort.

Resilience, adaptability and preparedness for future crises

Resilience, adaptability and preparedness require an anticipatory R&I policy including ways of identifying, monitoring and addressing threats and developing new emergency response capacities that involve science in systemic roles: as a generator of advice, as a capacity for quick analysis, monitoring of the challenge and evaluating the efficacy of responses, as well as a generator of new responses and tools against the crisis. Preparedness should include:

1. ‘Wind-tunnelling’ new plans, policies, and institutions through worst-case scenarios for alternative crises.
2. Exploring regularly new modes of assessing threats and trialing emergency responses, which offer the possibility to explore hidden opportunities.
3. Engaging research with all branches of government to share findings about threats and opportunities, and to foster more integrated and coordinated responses.

The key role of education

The Covid-19 crisis precipitates the introduction of a new wave of educational technologies, opening up new possibilities and engendering new challenges and risks. This could be heralding new opportunities for improving the relations
between science and education, and therefore strengthening the contributions of science to society, as well as new challenges of fracturing value and belief systems, populism and fake news. The availability of public funds for education and the role that private companies will play in new educational developments will be critical. EU R&I policy can contribute to improving the links between science, technology and education by supporting local experimentation in education in a framework that could help diffuse good practices across the EU.

EU level financing for R&I

After nearly 50 years of Framework Programme, EU direct funding for R&I projects has become part of the institutional backbone of the EU. The scenarios remind us that this is not given and that the EU budget is subject to political negotiations despite its importance for the maintenance of R&I capacity in different Member States. There is a continuous need for ensuring that the EU gets value for money out of its investments in R&I including the recognition of the benefit that Member States and EU policies across the board gain from the EU Framework Programme.

Regional disparities in R&I performance

The persistence of regional disparities in R&I performance has been a problem for the EU for a long time, and one that the EU has yet to resolve. The scenarios remind us that such disparities can develop into deep divide across the economy and politics of the European Union. Furthermore, the scenarios demonstrate how some modes of recovery can be better suited for enabling the more equitable generation of economic and social value from R&I, particularly in those regions facing greater present day challenges. Emphasis in social innovation, social entrepreneurship and frugal innovation in the EU instruments may make important contributions to overcoming regional disparities.

Defining future priorities in R&I policy

R&I policy priority-setting processes and the extent to which R&I priorities are driven by concerns with the past, current and future challenges vary across Member States of the EU. This affects the definiton of joint priorities as well as the diversity and vibrancy of the EU innovation ecosystem. Scenarios that explored conditions of challenging polarisation between different national interests and between public and private interests, highlight the importance of public engagement and especially of engagement with new actors, such as social-purpose companies, in the definition of future priorities of EU R&I policy as well as in the governance and implementation of the R&I effort.

Other emerging issues of relevance to EU R&I policy

Additional emerging issues that may deserve particular attention in the coming years include:

• Several scenarios suggest that there will be both a greater need and stronger willingness for Member States to collaborate closely on matters of R&I policy.
• The widening of the range of actors as well as of policies that matter for R&I, linked to the growing policy attention to system change will become an important challenge for coordination of efforts and policy coherence.
• With their strong emphasis on competitiveness and growth objectives, the established rationales underpinning EU R&I policy are increasingly out of synch with the needs of societal and world challenges.
• As the landscape of European knowledge systems continues to evolve, R&I policy must realise its influential role in shaping broader change and adopt socio-economic disparities and environmental concerns as guiding principles.

All scenarios suggest the need for stepping up collective capability and willingness to actively engage in open and collaborative R&I relationships, both within Europe and with the world beyond Europe. This is obvious in relation to some of the global challenges Europe is aiming to address, but also with regard to emerging technologies where international alliances are decisive for establishing common standards and regulation. In order to ensure a relevant global role of Europe in the world, it is essential to build upon a strong, stable and coherent home base in R&I.

This report is also available on Zenodo.  

This is the final report from a foresight study that aimed at supporting the development of the Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe (2025-2027). The study lasted for 18 months and involved a wide range of activities that this report aims at presenting.

These activities aimed at providing early-stage strategic intelligence and sense-making contributions – issues, trends, perspectives, ideas - that could contribute novel elements to the more structured processes of strategic planning that were to follow. The work followed two important directions that were recommended by EFFLA (2012)1 as core elements of bringing foresight into EU R&I policy: knowledge-based review and broad engagement.

Knowledge based review was conducted with the help of the 40 experts who constituted the team that worked on the project. All these experts have contributed as authors to the authorship of the different chapters of this report. About 300 additional experts contributed to the project through its numerous workshops that helped shape the scenarios and ideas about their policy implications, and through membership in the on-line platform of the project at www.futures4europe.eu, which reached 307 people. Last, we acknowledge the 943 experts who responded to our final consultation survey on the implications of our foresight for the directions of EU R&I policy.

The foresight process
The foresight process in support of the 2nd Strategic Plan comprised a wide spectrum of activities:
• As a reference point for the exploratory work, the explicit and implicit impact assumptions of the 1st Strategic Plan were identified and visualised with the help of a qualitative system analysis and modelling tool for causal loop analysis.
• An exploratory analysis of forward-looking sources (e.g. foresight reports, web-based horizon scanning) was conducted to identify relevant trends and signals of unexpected developments. These were discussed in online workshops and on www.futures4europe.eu.
• An outlook on emerging developments in the global and European context of EU R&I policy was developed drawing on a major online workshop in autumn 2021 with some 60 participants, experts and policy makers, who worked with multi-level context scenarios and specific context narratives about emerging disruptions.
• On that basis and in close consultation with the European Commission involving another major workshop in February 2022 which brought together 80 participants, Expert Teams were set up to develop disruptive scenarios in five areas of major interest. Each team ran several internal workshops but also involved further experts and Commission staff in their work, both through the online platform and through a final policy-oriented workshop. The foresight work within the areas of interest resulted in five deep dives on the following topics:
> Climate change, Research, and Innovation: Radical Options from Social Change to Geoengineering
> Hydrogen Economy – A radical alternative
> The EU in a Volatile New World - The challenge of global leadership
> Global Commons
> Transhumanist Revolutions
• Further areas of interest identified since were explored through review papers aiming to capture major trends, developments and scenario sketches in relation to further disruptive developments
> Social Confrontations
> Artificial General Intelligence: Issues and Opportunities
> The Interpenetration of Criminal and Lawful Economic Activities
> The Future of Health
• A third major workshop took place in October 2022 bringing together all the thematic strands of work and addressing possible R&I policy implications from this work. Participation in this workshop reached 250 individuals over 2 days.
• Building on the workshop, the online Dynamic Argumentative Delphi survey Research4Futures collect suggestions from further experts and citizens about the implications of this foresight work for the priorities of EU R&I policy.

This foresight study has been the most widely engaging foresight exercise yet aiming to support EU R&I policy. Through this broad engagement, the study did not only develop intelligence for the 2nd Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe but also contributed to the development of an EU R&I foresight community, one that is an asset for future R&I policies across Europe. 

Nobody wants to die early. The desire to stay healthy and to have a long-lasting life is enormous. At first glance, it seems as if the increasing number of older people in the EU is in accordance with that. When having a closer look at that trend, three main factors seem to contribute to an overall older population: a generally increased life expectancy, a modern, readily accessible medical system, healthier lifestyles, and low birth rates. Migration is a counter-trend to the ageing society, as the majority of migrants to the EU are young families. This fact, however, does not substantially diminish the absolute number of older people in the EU. The potential consequences are diverse. Although people get older while being healthier, it is likely that the cost of health care will rise, putting an extra burden on the health insurance system. Hence, we might have to expect a clear social divide: Will only rich people be able to afford to get old? Or are the additional health-related costs going to be shifted to younger generations? Will the state have to step in?

Proposed scenarios about the future should come with a pinch of salt. Without being perfectly accurate, they help prepare policymakers for better or worse. The REGROUP project funded under the Horizon Europe programme aims to advise the EU on how to address post-pandemic policy and institutional challenges by analysing the societal and political consequences of COVID-19 and considering the normative implications of the pandemic.

Future thinking capacity-building initiatives like PHIRI (https://www.phiri.eu/) invite policymakers to lend their ears to extreme and value-driven scenarios in post-pandemic population health.

Results for the working group Health are available at: http://foresight.cnr.it/working-groups/wg-health.html

Airborne transmission is considered one of the most common ways of transmitting respiratory viruses. The reach of airborne pathogens and persistence of aerosolized particles suspended in the air are a significant concern for the spread of pandemic and seasonal respiratory diseases. This is particularly relevant in indoor spaces where most respiratory infections occur. Controlling the transmission of airborne pathogens is therefore a cornerstone of public health efforts to manage and prevent the spread of infectious diseases, ensuring safety and health for individuals and communities. Technologies that allow such control are essential to address the challenge.

This report is the output of a comprehensive study which evaluates the potential of the current technology landscape for suppressing indoor airborne pathogen transmission. The analysis outlines two main technology groups: those for detecting airborne pathogens and those for decontaminating air and surfaces. It identifies several key technologies in each group, and assesses their maturity, impact, and potential priority for funding. It outlines the drivers, enablers, and barriers for the development and adoption of these technologies, providing insights into factors that may influence their future implementation. It also explores forward-looking perspectives with scenarios for future health crises and offers recommendations for policy and research to address the challenges and leverage the opportunities in the field of indoor air quality.

Airborne transmission is considered one of the most common ways of transmitting respiratory viruses. The reach of airborne pathogens and persistence of aerosolized particles suspended in the air are a significant concern for the spread of pandemic and seasonal respiratory diseases. This is particularly relevant in indoor spaces where most respiratory infections occur. 

Controlling the transmission of airborne pathogens is therefore a cornerstone of public health efforts to manage and prevent the spread of infectious diseases, ensuring safety and health for individuals and communities. Technologies that allow such control are essential to address the challenge. This report is the output of a comprehensive study which evaluates the potential of the current technology landscape for suppressing indoor airborne pathogen transmission. 

The analysis outlines two main technology groups: those for detecting airborne pathogens and those for decontaminating air and surfaces. It identifies several key technologies in each group, and assesses their maturity, impact, and potential priority for funding. It outlines the drivers, enablers, and barriers for the development and adoption of these technologies, providing insights into factors that may influence their future implementation. It also explores forward-looking perspectives with scenarios for future health crises and offers recommendations for policy and research to address the challenges and leverage the opportunities in the field of indoor air quality. 

The study was conducted during 2024 by European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) and Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA).