Helping policymakers build a future-ready Europe
We combine creative problem solving and scientific rigour to tackle Europe’s most complex, interconnected challenges: from technology to sustainability transitions, strengthening preparedness for future risks and more.
Working with policymakers, experts and citizens, we help institutions navigate uncertainty and design resilient, future-oriented and evidence-based policies.
In the spotlight
An event by the EU Policy Lab.
PolyFutures is an invitation to explore how participatory, creative, future-oriented and actionable approaches can inspire better policymaking. Over two days, participants will exchange ideas, share experiences and reflect on how foresight and design approaches are...
Time is not a neutral backdrop to policymaking – questions of pace, timing and horizons have become central to what we govern. Learn more about our conversation at PolyFutures.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- EU policy lab
- Foresight
- Design for policy
- Behavioural insights
Shaping a fairer Europe for all generations: discover how the EU Policy Lab helped the co-creation of the first EU Strategy on Intergenerational Fairness with citizens, experts and institutions — and explore the tools to put it into practice.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Foresight
- Design for policy
- Behavioural insights
- EU policy lab
The EU Policy Lab way
We work through ‘policy labs’: collaborative spaces where we combine foresight, behavioural insights and design for policy to rethink how policies are conceived, tested and implemented.
Each project is a tailored journey. We bring together civil servants, researchers, stakeholders and citizens, using a custom mix of methods and evidence to identify root causes, question assumptions, stress‑test options and co‑create effective, inclusive responses.
Our impact
Our latest stories
As part of the Labelling knowledge project, the EU Policy Lab conducted an exploratory literature review to better understand the state of evidence-based information design on labels.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Design for policy
The Labelling Knowledge project is an internal organisational transformation initiative by the EU Policy Lab to support the development and implementation of labels as policy instruments and to create a space for critical thinking on their use.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Design for policy
How can democracy cope with the combined pressures of digitalisation, AI, shifting citizen expectations and changing institutions? These are some of the questions at the heart of a new foresight study on the future of democracy.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Foresight
- Design for policy
Time is not a neutral backdrop to policymaking – questions of pace, timing and horizons have become central to what we govern. Learn more about our conversation at PolyFutures.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- EU policy lab
- Foresight
- Design for policy
- Behavioural insights
Our idea for this "off-site day" was simple: to bring those shaping EU policies and institutional processes into the same room as design experts working in innovation, human-centred transformation, and futures thinking.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- EU policy lab
- Design for policy
How can policymaking become more rooted in how people think and decide? This was the starting point for the Discover Behavioural Insights for Policymaking workshop at the PolyFutures conference.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Behavioural insights
Technology foresight, like all foresight, is often misunderstood as attempting to predict what is coming. While it will not tell you the future, it can do something powerful: provide a structured way to explore possible futures and actively shape them.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Foresight
- EU policy lab
We invited participants to engage in an unusual exercise: a conversation with young EU citizens from the year 2040.
- EU Policy Lab tags
- EU policy lab
- Design for policy
- Foresight
We have been developing a scenario-building tool designed to shift how we think about the future. Rather than focusing on what different futures might look like, this approach asks a more fundamental question: how do values and attitudes shape the futures we create?
- EU Policy Lab tags
- Foresight