Paving the way for an EU Intergenerational Fairness Strategy

Last September, in her mission letter to the Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport, the President of the European Commission asked him to prepare a Strategy on Intergenerational Fairness to “map out how we can strengthen communication between generations and ensure that interests of present and future generations are respected throughout our policy and law making”. In the same document, she also committed to embedding citizen participation in European Union policymaking and instilling a lasting culture of participative democracy. 

Here we are, barely 3 months into the new Commission’s mandate, working to make this happen through a collaboration between the Joint Research Centre’s EU Policy Lab and the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (EAC).  

How have we set out to do this?  

We have brought together foresight, design and behavioural insights in the EU Policy Lab to design an inclusive and cross-cutting process which should result in a comprehensive EU strategy on Intergenerational Fairness in one year.  

Our process consists of 5 steps: 

• Scoping - How is intergenerational fairness understood; what are the salient issues; what initiatives, ideas exist already? 
• Visioning - What do we want it to be -​ Participatory co-creation of possible long-term visions 
• Ideation – What are the functions, values, key needs and requirements, as well as policy instruments and approaches​? 
• Designing the strategy – Imagining a common EU approach to intergenerational fairness 
• Adoption process – procedure for approving the strategy document by the College of Commissioners 

Listen and co-create 

In true EU Policy Lab spirit, our approach is to engage all relevant stakeholders and citizens from the outset to co-create a strategic vision and inform the strategy accordingly. We are complementing this far-reaching stakeholder consultation by mobilising the research and knowledge of the Joint Research Centre for evidence-informed policymaking. ​Finally, with this year-long process, we are bringing together different teams and experts from across the European Commission to create a common, comprehensive strategy.  

In case you’ve missed it.... 

On 20 February, we initiated the scoping phase with stakeholders during an event hosted by the EU Policy Lab in Brussels, which was opened by Commissioner Micallef, in conversation with JRC Director-General Bernard Magenhann and DG EAC Director-General, Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen.  

The workshop after the official launch was conducted in an interactive, participatory format with continuous dialogue between participants. The discussion focused on three aspects:  

• what are the most critical issues between generations;  
• how can stakeholders make the strategy development process their own; and  
• what are the interesting ideas and developments already out there.  

In this first scoping exercise, participants discussed in small groups the sources of intergenerational commonalities and tensions, as well as those between current and future generations across the social, technological, economic, environmental and political domains. Here, the issues of democracy, digital, economic and social systems came up often in conversation. 

The second exercise allowed stakeholders to link their activities, events and processes to the strategy development. We have received a lot of good ideas on how to embed our activity in the broader landscape of actions and networks that address issues related to intergenerational fairness. 

At the end, the participants were encouraged to share what, in their opinion, are the existing interesting projects and activities that address intergenerational fairness, which could be scaled up. They could also suggest new initiatives and approaches that could be started and point out aspects that need to change.  

All these elements will help us define the scope of the project, manage and understand the expectations of stakeholders and better take into account what is already happening. This will be our foundation for the next step of co-creating visions of intergenerational fairness in the European Union.  

We have also launched the citizen consultation so add your views on the 

Citizens' Engagement Platform