Dear readers,

Foresight is all about exploring long-term futures and creating shared visions for policy-making. So as we gear up for a bumper year of elections, including those for European Parliament, I was happy to open this year’s conference of the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) where we explored the EU's strategic choices  up to 2040.

The organisers, the JRC’s EU Policy Lab and the European Parliamentary Research Service, brought together an impressive line-up of speakers. While there was a sense of urgency about some immediate challenges and opportunities the EU faces, as well as a somewhat challenging outlook in areas like geopolitics, internal cooperation, and technology, we also picked up some positive signals.

This year’s conference provided an excellent platform for discussing Europe's strategic choices for the future. Key themes included the need for actionable foresight, changes in global power dynamics, the effects of globalisation and deglobalisation, the race for technological regulation, climate change cooperation, and democratic resurgence.

The 2023 conference also feeds into the preparation of the ESPAS Global Trends Report, the next edition of which is expected to be published in spring 2024. 

This month, we 60 years of nuclear research at the JRC. Over the years, our nuclear researchers have made a very significant contribution in many energy-related fields, as well as in radioactivity, environmental monitoring, combatting the trafficking of nuclear materials, and using targeted alpha therapy on various types of cancer. Read Commissioner Ivanova’s op-ed on our many achievements and how nuclear research has been and will be one of the cornerstones of European collaboration.  

Happy reading,

Stephen Quest

JRC Director-General