Democracies in Europe have demonstrated resilience and modernisation in the face of various social and technological challenges. Democracy in the age of the Anthropocene will necessitate radical shifts in values, power relations and modes of governance, while also being built on the present, in all its diversity, paradox and insufficiency. Innovating to meet these challenges will require re-imagining how people living in democracies become equipped and supported to co-create resilient, democratic futures in Europe and beyond. Clear visions are needed to build strategies that allow for rethinking and redesigning spaces, institutions, instruments and ways to represent and include people in democratic governance. YouthDecide 2040 aims to support European Union democracy to rise to these challenges through evidence-based historical and contemporary knowledge, strategic foresight, and robust deliberation. 

Specifically, YouthDecide 2040 has the main objective to: co-create with European youth – and older generations, political and institutional actors, and organised civil society – coherent pathways to desired futures of democracy in the European Union in 2040. We translate our main objective into a series of research questions that need to be answered to support the work. Each question is connected to a key objective and corresponding work packages to support co-creation. All activities are planned to be inclusive and open processes – transparently documented along the way – to enable repetition and implementation beyond the life of the project. The project’s ambition is to reinvigorate democracy in and across Europe with visions and pathways – made with active and inclusive citizen participation – for becoming more resilient to current and future challenges. 

Preferred scenarios, and visions from YouthDecide 2040 will aim to inform research and innovation pathways. They will help ensure the alignment of future and ongoing research and innovation with the values and needs of the democratic societies within the EU that support their advancement. The YouthDecide 2040 consortium comprises 11 partners with research expertise in areas of democracy research, foresight, participatory deliberation, co-creation, strategy development, as well as partners working in youth representation and organization, democracy advocacy, design, and multimedia communication. The project duration is three years, until the end of 2027 and it has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101177438. 

This is the short English-language Policy Brief from the research project Foresight and Future Generations in Law-Making (FORGE). FORGE examined issues of future-regarding lawmaking in an interdisciplinary manner, combining expertise on futures studies, political science, and jurisprudence. The aim of the study was to analyse the status of future generations and their rights in current legislative processes, and to map and compare practices for foresight and consideration of future generations in different political contexts, nationally and internationally. The purpose of the project was to increase understanding on i) how future generations can be better taken into account in policymaking; ii) how foresight can be better utilised in lawmaking. 

The FORGE-project was unique – there had not previously been a study with a similar scope in Finland and comparable international examples are, to the best knowledge of the authors, extremely rare. FORGE supported the preparation of the second part
of the Government Report on the Future. The project was funded by the Government’s analysis, assessment and research activities (VN TEAS) and was conducted during 1/2022–11/2022 by researchers of the University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University and Tampere University.

Findings:

From an international comparison, Finland already has an advanced national foresight system and can be regarded as a pioneer in futureregarding policymaking. However, there is still room for improvement in terms of using foresight and considering future generations as a part of lawmaking. Such improvement could be achieved by developing and upgrading the existing institutions and practices and by making more incremental changes in practices, modes of interaction, and attitudes. For example, foresight should be conducted more as a continuous activity, and future generations’ interests and rights should be considered more systematically in legislative processes, while acknowledging the plurality of future interests.

Development proposals:

Full lenght-report available in Finnish

In addition to the 12-page Policy Brief summarising the FORGE projects' finding in English, The Prime Minister's Office has published the full 203-page report in Finnish. This can be found here below.

The research project Foresight and Future Generations in Law-Making (FORGE) examined issues of future-regarding lawmaking in an interdisciplinary manner, combining expertise on futures studies, political science, and jurisprudence. The aim of the study was to analyse the status of future generations and their rights in current legislative processes, and to map and compare practices for foresight and consideration of future generations in different political contexts, nationally and internationally. The purpose of the project was to increase understanding on i) how future generations can be better taken into account in policymaking; ii) how foresight can be better utilised in lawmaking. FORGE’s conceptual and analytical structure is pictured in the figure 1.

The FORGE-project is unique – there has not previously been a study with a similar scope in Finland and comparable international examples are, to the best knowledge of the authors, extremely rare. FORGE supported the preparation of the second part of the Government Report on the Future. The project was funded by the Government’s analysis, assessment and research activities (VN TEAS) and was conducted during 1/2022–11/2022 by researchers of the University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University and Tampere University.