Trend EU demand for foresight shifts from program design to long-term structural questions

Summary

According to the Futures4Europe platform, Foresight on Demand published 26 reports between 2021 and 2025. In 2021 most tasks directly supported Horizon Europe design, such as concretizing visions for five mission areas and pandemic outlooks and post-COVID scenarios. In 2022 and 2023 topics expanded into industry and society, from the hydrogen economy and low-carbon roadmaps to school education, civic resilience and democracy, and in 2023 it directly supported Horizon Europe's second strategic plan. Commissioning bodies diversified from the research and innovation directorate-general to the European Environment Agency and the directorates for education and justice, and a project with the EU Drugs Agency on synthetic drugs is under way. Topics in 2024 and 2025, such as the future of big tech in Europe and demographic change in the research system, were longer-term and more structural. The author reads this as demand evolving from short-term issue response toward preemptive exploration of the EU's medium- and long-term transition.