Inspiration for a next generation EU
The Future of Europe seen by EU citizens
What do you want the future to look like? In which future would you like to live? These are questions of high relevance for policy were at the heart of the Conference on the Future of Europe that ended in May 2022. This EU initiative has created a new space for debate with citizens on how to respond to the European Union’s challenges and to create the Union that its citizens collectively want for the future. However, beyond the formulation of many individual wishes for the future, we must structure these conversations to build coherent, comprehensive and desirable alternative futures that are achievable. This can then provide a meaningful and constructive space for political debate in the EU with a long-term perspective.
The #OurFutures - Stories for the future of Europe initiative addresses this long-term need beyond the end of the Conference on the Future of Europe. It offers a simple questionnaire through an interactive multilingual platform able to cater to the 24 official languages of the European Union. It aims at collecting a large number of very short stories that express what participants would like to see in the Europe of the future (2040), with their hopes, their uncertainties and their ideas for a positive future. These stories, written by Europeans from all walks of life, remain anonymous. To ensure success, the project relies on a robust methodology (powered by SenseMaker©) to exploit, in a foresight perspective, the rich material provided by participants.
This methodology operates in all EU languages to maximize reach. To avoid any bias, the analysis bases itself strictly on what the authors themselves tell by answering a few simple questions. The stories, also translated into English, are published on the Futures4Europe.eu platform. This makes it possible to maintain the connection with the participants and stimulate discussions. #OurFutures is an open-ended project that will remain active for many years to collect as much material as possible and monitor possible shifts. Results can be analysed per country, per age group, per policy domain or other classifications. The analyses can also correlate several parameters to check whether certain values or preferences occur in specific combinations. The first analyses are very promising and the insights that they provide will serve to generate concrete, future-oriented recommendations for EU action to build together the European Union that its citizens want.
The purpose of this initiative is to provide a novel tool to empower all Europeans to have their say and influence the creation of their own collective future. It does so by providing concrete ideas about desired futures in the form of structured material that can be analysed to feed constructively the political debate.
BOL Erica;
BONTOUX Laurent;
2024-05-27
Publications Office of the European Union
JRC136879
978-92-68-15941-5 (online),
1831-9424 (online),
EUR 31936 EN,
OP KJ-NA-31-936-EN-N (online),
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC136879,
10.2760/931797 (online),
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