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)