According to Kastinos, when planning a long-range research and innovation programme like Horizon Europe, it helps to reflect on what the future might be like. Will we be struggling with devastating climate change in the 2020s? Will gene-splicing technologies be producing products, for good or ill, in the marketplace? Will the world be more unified?

For the first time, in preparing Horizon Europe, the Commission engaged in extensive, systematic and multi-year foresight to reflect on such questions. Doing so was a commitment of the Innovation Union Initiative of the Europe 2020 Strategy. 

Even before work on Horizon Europe began, Baron Peter Piot, the scientist who co-discovered the Ebola virus and fora time chairman of an EU expert group, the European Forum for Forward Looking Activities (EFFLA), had been critical of the lack of foresight in the preparation of Horizon 2020.

Based on the recommendations of EFFLA, the Directorate General for Research and Innovation established a foresight hub supporting an internal network across all Commission departments.  The network has been the main interface with the BOHEMIA study, an important European foresight project launched 2 years ago, to support the preparation of Horizon Europe.

Two years later, the BOHEMIA study has been completed – you can read it here. And the proposal for Horizon Europe was published June 7th.  We can now ask: has foresight made a tangible difference?

Find the answer and more information here