FORESIGHT IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

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FORESIGHT IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

• FOR SOCIETY Conference
• Athens, 26-27 November 2007
• P. VALETTE

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FORESIGHT

• Foresight is more and more associated to the
  policies on the top of the agenda. "Vision of
  the future" is a driving force of the
  policy-making.
• Foresight is also expected to strengthen the
  research policy and the European Research Area.
  This expectation has been confirmed at the latest
  Lisbon Conference on ERA.

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Social Sciences and Humanities

• Social Sciences and Humanities Programme (SSH)
  is based on 5 EU-challenges
• Lisbon Strategy,
• Sustainable development,
• Major social trends,
• Europe in the World,
• Citizens in the EU.
• Foresight is an activity of SSH which should
  help
• to address these challenges.

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new organisation

• The FORESIGHT Activity is joined to the
  management of the other SSH Activities in DG
  Research it is a mutual enrichment
• - the socio-economic and humanities activities
  will include foresight exercises
• - the foresight activity will take advantage
  of the scientific background information and the
  tools generated by the other SSH activities.

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new orientations

• Accordingly the new organisation, new
  orientations have been given to the Foresight
  activity
• - it will cover also other EU-Policies and
  issues, not only ERA, science and research
• - it will undertake foresight exercises and will
  launch call for proposals in this respect
• - it will assist the other SSH Activities and
  Themes to realise foresight exercises
• - it will enlarge the traditional scientific
  community involved in the foresight research.

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Specific Programme

• These orientations are contained in the Specific
  Programme. The necessary continuity of the mutual
  learning and the cooperation between national and
  EU foresight activities should be
• ensured.
• In this context, the ERANET instrument can be
  considered it is preferable for the EU that
  national administrations coordinate their
  foresight research activities.

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ERANET

• The ERANET instrument is being implemented within
  the SSH programme a new option, the ERANET ,
  has been created.
• ERANET is aiming at launching trans-national
  joint programmes through call for proposals
  addressed to groups of countries which make
  available financial resources EU Framework
  Programme can contribute.

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ERANET

• ERANET is open in the WP2008 and is following
  the  bottom-up  type for SSH (no prescription
  of areas) nothing is decided for the WP2009.
• ERANET and ERANET are based on pre-existing
  national programmes which decide to join forces.
• A clear difference has to be made between the
  adminitrative institutions managing the research
  in the countries (in general the ministries) and
  the research community itself.

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future prospects

• The success of the EU foresight exercises will be
  the first objective these coming years EU 2025
  in the global context, Social Europe in 2020, the
  future of ERA are major initiatives to undertake
• Sectoral initiatives will be also welcome
  health, agriculture, post carbon society,
  migration and demography,
• New methodological developments have to be
  considered, taking into account the needs for
  policy making.

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Future Prospects

• Quantitative impacts of alternative scenarios on
  the economy and the environment are examples of
  needs scientific information is also necessary
  for the scenario characterisation itself (e.g.
  physical damages of emissions).
• New generation of tools addressing long term
  issues in an integrated way is being developed
  foresight should also consider this development.
• Links with the policy making and with an enlarged
  scientific community are essential to address
  these new challenges.

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in conclusion

• The new challenges will have impacts on the
  current foresight activity of the EU Framework
  Programme it has to be seen positively.
• The choice of the most sensitive policy issues to
  be addressed, most efficient instruments and most
  relevant partnership is crucial for the success
  of foresight.
• We can be confident with the future of foresight.

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SOCIAL SCIENCES,HUMANITIES