Analiza prospectivă strategică ca instrument pentru guvernanța UE și pentru o mai bună reglementare
Opinion factsheet
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- Afaceri constituționale și instituționale
- Regulatory policy
Opinion number:
CDR-1562-2023
Status:
Adoptat
Objective
Supporting CoR's political priorities for 2020-2025 and in particular the priority on '' Democracy and the future of the EU''.
Highlighting the importance of strategic foresight as a governance and policy-planning tool, and especially as one of the most essential parts of better regulation.
Contributing to building-up the foresight capacities of the CoR and the regions, and on how to link them to the EU level, and promoting the role of the BRASS-Group as CoR’s driving force to ensure consistency and coherence between the CoR's better regulation tools and encourage LRAs to integrate strategic foresight into their own tool sets of better regulation.
Underlining how, through foresight the EU institutions and LRAs will be more prepared to anticipate tomorrow’s challenges, in order to make their legislation "future-proof" and therefore more suitable to be able to meet EU’s political priorities and long-term goals.
Suggesting pathways for developing the necessary foresight structures and stimulating cooperation on foresight between LRAs.
Profiling the CoR as a future key partner for the EU institutions in delivering foresight content, and therefore also as a driving force for the EU's better regulation agenda.
Highlighting the importance of strategic foresight as a governance and policy-planning tool, and especially as one of the most essential parts of better regulation.
Contributing to building-up the foresight capacities of the CoR and the regions, and on how to link them to the EU level, and promoting the role of the BRASS-Group as CoR’s driving force to ensure consistency and coherence between the CoR's better regulation tools and encourage LRAs to integrate strategic foresight into their own tool sets of better regulation.
Underlining how, through foresight the EU institutions and LRAs will be more prepared to anticipate tomorrow’s challenges, in order to make their legislation "future-proof" and therefore more suitable to be able to meet EU’s political priorities and long-term goals.
Suggesting pathways for developing the necessary foresight structures and stimulating cooperation on foresight between LRAs.
Profiling the CoR as a future key partner for the EU institutions in delivering foresight content, and therefore also as a driving force for the EU's better regulation agenda.
Impact
The whole impact of unexpected and unforeseen events like the pandemic or the war in Ukraine underlines the importance of a CoR-driven synergy between the activities of various LRAs on foresight planning. A certain number of European Member States and a few sub-national authorities have already established specific offices or structures focusing on foresight and long-term policy-planning: sharing and spreading the existing best practices will be a step forward in the process of developing these “anticipatory governance models” on the regional and local level.
One of the most relevant elements which the CoR brings to the inter-institutional debate is the idea to better integrate and link sub-national foresight activities to the EU level (including in this process not only the EU institutions, but also other bodies involved in the European regional democracy processes, such as i.e. CALRE), thus reinforcing the EU-level foresight process by bringing the diversity of local and regional experience and specific foresight concerns based on different territorial conditions into the debate.
Furthermore, the opinion promotes the idea that LRAs should focus on strategic foresight as a long-term planning instrument, in order to complete the transition toward a green, digital and more socially cohesive Europe. The combined use of strategic foresight and of Territorial Impact Assessments (TIAs), in particular, could prove a crucial tool for the development of a more efficient and more sustainable regulation, thus able to give new impulse to the economies of the European regions, strengthening the resilience of the social fabric and identifying new paradigms of future development.
Constantly performing foresight would also help LRAs in performing better when dealing with public funding (both at EU and at national level), especially with regard to Cohesion Policy issues.
Last but not least, developing its role as a hub for regional and local foresight activity, the CoR's position in the inter-institutional EU foresight debate would be reinforced.
One of the most relevant elements which the CoR brings to the inter-institutional debate is the idea to better integrate and link sub-national foresight activities to the EU level (including in this process not only the EU institutions, but also other bodies involved in the European regional democracy processes, such as i.e. CALRE), thus reinforcing the EU-level foresight process by bringing the diversity of local and regional experience and specific foresight concerns based on different territorial conditions into the debate.
Furthermore, the opinion promotes the idea that LRAs should focus on strategic foresight as a long-term planning instrument, in order to complete the transition toward a green, digital and more socially cohesive Europe. The combined use of strategic foresight and of Territorial Impact Assessments (TIAs), in particular, could prove a crucial tool for the development of a more efficient and more sustainable regulation, thus able to give new impulse to the economies of the European regions, strengthening the resilience of the social fabric and identifying new paradigms of future development.
Constantly performing foresight would also help LRAs in performing better when dealing with public funding (both at EU and at national level), especially with regard to Cohesion Policy issues.
Last but not least, developing its role as a hub for regional and local foresight activity, the CoR's position in the inter-institutional EU foresight debate would be reinforced.
Essential points
THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS
- emphasises the importance of foresight, especially in situations that are complex, uncertain, and fast-evolving, in order to increase resilience and ensure that all institutional levels of the EU are better equipped to respond to change in a timely and innovative way, in line with the principle of subsidiarity;
- points out that the final recommendations of the Conference on the Future of Europe are based on citizens' expectations of forward-looking, sustainable and "future-proof" action by the EU; in this regard welcomes the Commission's recognition of strategic foresight, both as one of its cross-cutting objectives and as a governance tool;
- highlights the contribution of foresight to providing a long-term strategic perspective, which is particularly important for the elaboration of a strategic agenda for the future of the EU in the wake of the 2024 European elections and in view of the adoption of the new 2024-2029 political agenda, as well as throughout the preparatory stages for the new policy cycle;
- stresses that developing a culture of strategic foresight geared towards better governance at local and regional level, and linking it more closely to other levels of decision-making, is integral to building resilience and anticipatory as well as participatory governance across the EU and globally;
- calls for a more in-depth debate on the most appropriate and useful approaches to the decision-making processes to be used in local and regional strategic foresight, taking into account the specific features and challenges of the context in which they are applied, such as increasing social vulnerabilities, regional diversity and the factors causing public dissatisfaction;
- confirms its willingness to contribute and add value to the EU's interinstitutional strategic foresight efforts; is prepared, in cooperation with the EU institutions, to promote a closer link between the strategic foresight activities promoted at local, provincial and regional level with those at national level;
- stresses that a future revision of the Interinstitutional Agreement (IIA) on Better Regulation should clearly recognise strategic foresight as a key element of this agenda;
- highlights that the CoR should have access to trilogues in the co-decision procedure on the basis of the revision of the IIA, and reiterates its commitment to exploring new ways of influencing EU interinstitutional dialogue. This is all the more relevant in the context of the recognition of strategic foresight, and of its local and regional dimension, as a key element of the EU agenda.