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. 

The ongoing inter-institutional European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) Horizon Scanning activity is led since 2022 by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and the European Parliamentary Research Services. An iterative methodology is rolled out at three successive levels, involving experts in a variety of policy areas and across several EU institutions.

Firstly, at the outset, this exercise builds a wider EU community engaged in horizon scanning. Their task at a first level has involved looking for future developments that sit at the margins of current thinking and planning, the so-called ‘signs of new’.

Secondly, sense-making workshops are organised on a monthly basis to consider through new lenses the identified ‘signs of new’ collected over the month and find links and interconnections among them across policies and sectors. The aim of these second-level workshops is thus to imagine possible impactful future developments, ‘signals of change’, using the collected signs as prompts.

Thirdly, future impact workshops, conceived as exploratory and prioritisation workshops are organised after conducting a few sense-making workshops. These workshops also include the participation of officials across all ESPAS institutions and aim to prioritise the three potentially most impactful ‘signals of change’ from among those identified at an earlier stage.
This careful process results in Horizon Scanning newsletters providing a broader perspective on policy making.

Read the latest newsletters here: Horizon Scanning | ESPAS

See also blog post describing the project and its role in EU : Spotting the Future: How Horizon Scanning can help shape EU Policy - European Commission (europa.eu) 

ESPAS Horizon Scanning feeds to other ESPAS projects. Read the Global Trends Reports published every five years.

Partners:

European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC)
European Parliamentary Research Services (EPRS)

Futures Garden: Pioneering Policy Innovation through Speculative Design

At Futures Garden, we embark on a visionary journey to redefine policy-making for Europe's future. Our unique platform collaborates with leading futurists, innovative designers, and engaged EU citizens to envision a Europe enriched by diverse potential futures, each with its own opportunities and challenges. Our mission? To revolutionize policy creation by intertwining speculative design with creativity, empathy, and analytical insight. Our four-step approach ensures a comprehensive and impactful exploration:

• Horizon Scanning: We dive into cutting-edge ideas and emerging trends, identifying opportunities that could shape Europe's future.
• Speculative Design: Our creative process transforms abstract concepts into tangible, thought-provoking scenarios, making future possibilities more accessible and engaging.
• Citizen Engagement: We delve into the societal implications of these speculative scenarios, gathering diverse perspectives and insights from EU citizens.
• Policy Reflection: The final step involves analyzing the potential impact of these innovative ideas on policy-making, ensuring that future EU policies are forward-thinking, inclusive, and impactful.
  

Creating fictional artifacts through speculative design
Futures Garden aims at creating inspiring alternative future scenarios through the use of fictional future artifacts that invite to reflection and debate. The pilot project took place in 2023 and addressed two themes:

• “Dealing with future selves” explores new ways of being, individually and collectively, examines new practices and technologies that enhance self-reflection and sharing of emotions, which help shape our choices in life and nurture a renewed sense of togetherness.
• “Extending human perception to new scales” explores the richness of non-human intelligences, expanding our attention and appreciation for their unique sensory worlds, their “umwelt” – what they “feel” and how they “think”. In doing so it departs from the human-centric worldview towards a deeper understanding and celebration of life on Earth.
  
  The resulting fictional artifacts took the form of short, thought-provoking movies – Inwards and Symbiotic – which render the imagined future scenarios more tangible, immersive and engaging.
  
  🎬 Watch "Inwards" - The 2050s a re a time of deep social reconfiguration. No longer believing in the myth of perpetual economic growth, recipes for self-empowerment, and technological fixes, citizens of Europe seek to regain agency by turning inwards.
  New cultures of emotional excellence and material minimalism emerge, supported by tools for assisted introspection and emotion sharing. In the wake of this quiet revolution, the social contract progressively integrates a renewed sense of togetherness.
  
  🎬 Watch "Symbiotic" - Set in the Symbiocene era of the 2050s, a time marked by an expanded understanding of intelligence beyond human confines, Symbiotic explores a revolutionary breakthrough. Scientists have created a device that allows humans to experience the perceptions and sensory worlds of other intelligent beings, immersing them in the 'umwelt' of these creatures. This film documents the first groundbreaking experiences through the device, capturing the profound experiences of those who ventured into these new realms of intelligence.