Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2013-10-07-Speech-1-215-000"

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"Mr President, I am delighted to present this own-initiative report from the Committee on Budgets to the House for its consideration and thank my colleagues on the committee for allowing me to do so. I will review its purpose, where it has got to, and what still is to be done to create this interinstitutional system for long-term trends. So, in conclusion, thanks to the work of many within the institutions who have already been involved in the ongoing work of Espace, the project is on course to achieve its purpose and its design. If successful, it will be able to provide incisive and forward-looking documents, which will help prepare EU decisions in an open manner, having access to the best information available. In the past, many have spoken of the survival of the fittest. In tomorrow’s world, it is those who are best informed who are most likely to be the survivors. First, its purpose: with a rapid transition under way in the global system today, the aim of Espace is to enable the EU institutions to have the means whereby they can take into account long-term trends when taking current decisions. Effective EU policy-making will depend more and more on the timely identification of those long-term trends that have a bearing on the challenges and choices facing the Union in an increasingly complex and interdependent world. But we should not have the illusion that the purpose of Espace is to predict what is going to happen in the future. History is littered with examples of those who thought they knew how events were going to unfold, only to find the opposite occurred: witness the executive of Decca who in 1962 ended their contract with the Beatles, thinking there was no future for groups in pop. And indeed, over the past decade events have clearly shown how difficult it is to predict the future, such as the collapse of the financial markets in the autumn of 2008, or the extraordinary dynamism of the IT industry with the founding of Facebook and Google. Thus the emphasis must be, as the report recommends, on developing an effective capacity for the provision of independent, high-quality, interinstitutional analyses and advice on key trends confronting policy makers within the EU system on a regular basis. So where has the project got to so far? It is based on two budget lines. In the first, the pilot project produced a reflective document on ‘Global trends 2030 – Citizens in an interconnected and polycentric world’. Under the aegis of the EUISS in Paris, this interesting exercise drew attention, in particular, to three major themes. First, the evolving empowerment of the individual, empowered by technological change; second, the burgeoning rise of the global middle class against a backdrop of growing resource scarcity and persistent poverty; and last, the emergence of a multipolar world where non-state actors play a critical role with growing governance gaps. So now, in the second stage, more attention is being paid to economic, social and governance trends in the hope of identifying those trends which could have the greatest significance for the European Union over the next five years. As we turn into 2014, let us hope we can have a broad and imaginative debate on some of the emerging ideas. A working paper will be available shortly putting together some of the key ideas drawn from all these sources, before culminating in a document to be finalised towards the middle of next year, for the incoming leaders of the EU institutions to consider. Over the next few months, alongside this foresight report, there will be the elaboration of an administrative cooperation interinstitutional agreement, with each partner agreeing to undertake and maintain and participate on a continuing basis in the agreement. Furthermore, in the same process, a global repository website is also being built, to give access to a wide-ranging library of material relating to global trends. Once in place, such a system will be well-placed to provide specific input into decision-making, for example to the budgetary authority in the run-up to the negotiation of a first 2020 multiannual financial framework, or together with the Futurium which is looking at global trends."@en1
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