Technology

In 2015, the European Commission invited key personalities from European industry, government, the European Parliament and academia to advise it on establishing a Preparatory Action on Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)-related research.

The primary mission of this Group of Personalities was to help establish recommendations for a long-term vision for EU-funded CSDP-related research which can boost European defence cooperation. These recommendations address the overall scope and governance of future EU-funded CSDP research and highlight possible collaboration and coordination mechanisms. The overarching goal of the Preparatory Action and CSDP-related research is to create a framework that would facilitate a collaborative approach to defence among the member states.

This report is the result of several months of regular conversation and consultation among a group of experts encompassing the ‘sherpas’, officials from the European Commission and the EUISS.

The New Vision for Education project examines the role that technology can potentially play to improve education for the future. In phase II, we investigated innovative ways to help students develop competencies* and character qualities** broadly defined as social emotional skills, which are critical components of 21st century skill framework but not a core focus in today’s curriculum.

Can technology effectively facilitate the development of competencies and character qualities, in addition to cognitive skills? If yes, what are the opportunities to capture to make it happen? What are the immediate, mid-term, and long-term barriers to remove? How can multistakeholders work together to create a roadmap for this vision?

In seeking answers to these questions, the report assembles a list of 52 research-based digital product features that are highly correlated with the ten competencies and character qualities and identifies five nascent technology trends – wearable devices, leading-edge apps, virtual reality, advanced analytics and machine learning, and affective computing – that extend ways of fostering social emotional learning (SEL) and also offer potential for exciting new learning strategies. The report concludes with recommendations to each stakeholder on actions to advance SEL and SEL technology adoption.

The impending digital transformation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution holds the potential to redefine the very basis of our materials-reliant industrial economy. Enabled by the internet of things, a new model of growth gradually gaining independence from finite resource extraction is emerging. Can pervasive connectivity become the new infrastructure enabling effective material flows, keeping products, components and materials at their highest value at all times, thus enabling the coming of age of the circular economy?

A thriving and open Internet provides the foundation for the fourth industrial revolution. There has been growing concern that the Internet may be in danger of splintering into a series of bordered cyberspace segments endangering its very nature. World Economic Forum’s Global Challenge on the Future of the Internet supported research highlights a number of fault lines that need to be addressed by bringing all stakeholders together.

In 2015, Congress tasked the Department of Defense to commission an independent assessment of U.S. military strategy and force posture in the Asia-Pacific, as well as that of U.S. allies and partners, over the next decade. This CSIS study fulfills that congressional requirement. The authors assess U.S. progress to date and recommend initiatives necessary to protect U.S. interests in the Pacific Command area of responsibility through 2025. Four lines of effort are highlighted: (1) Washington needs to continue aligning Asia strategy within the U.S. government and with allies and partners; (2) U.S. leaders should accelerate efforts to strengthen ally and partner capability, capacity, resilience, and interoperability; (3) the United States should sustain and expand U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region; and (4) the United States should accelerate development of innovative capabilities and concepts for U.S. forces.

Today, we are at the beginning of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Developments in genetics, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing and biotechnology, to name just a few, are all building on and amplifying one another. This will lay the foundation for a revolution more comprehensive and all-encompassing than anything we have ever seen. Smart systems—homes, factories, farms, grids or cities—will help tackle problems ranging from supply chain management to climate change. The rise of the sharing economy will allow people to monetize everything from their empty house to their car.
While the impending change holds great promise, the patterns of consumption, production and employment created by it also pose major challenges requiring proactive adaptation by corporations, governments and individuals. Concurrent to the technological revolution are a set of broader socio-economic, geopolitical and demographic drivers of change, each interacting in multiple directions and intensifying one another. As entire industries adjust, most occupations are undergoing a fundamental transformation. While some jobs are threatened by redundancy and others grow rapidly, existing jobs are also going through a change in the skill sets required to do them. The debate on these transformations is often polarized between those who foresee limitless new opportunities and those that foresee massive dislocation of jobs. In fact, the reality is highly specific to the industry, region and occupation in question as well as the ability of various stakeholders to manage change.
The Future of Jobs Report is a first step in becoming specific about the changes at hand. It taps into the knowledge of those who are best placed to observe the dynamics of workforces—Chief Human Resources and Strategy Officers—by asking them what the current shifts mean, specifically for employment, skills and recruitment across industries and geographies. In particular, we have introduced a new measure—skills stability—to quantify the degree of skills disruption within an occupation, a job family or an entire industry. We have also been able to provide an outlook on the gender dynamics of the changes underway, a key element in understanding how the benefits and burdens of the Fourth Industrial Revolution will be distributed.

The European Union seems to be moving from one emergency to the next. Europe’s leaders are in crisis-fighting mode: reactive, improvising, often uncoordinated – but ultimately modestly successful.
The Eurozone has not splintered; Russia is smarting under Western sanctions; some burden-sharing on refugees has been agreed. Busy with short-term problems, however, Europeans have taken their eyes off more profound, long-term challenges. How the European Union copes with its immediate problems in the next couple of years will determine how the continent will fare in decades to come.
In this White Paper, we – the Global Agenda Council on Europe – are analysing some of the most pressing issues confronting the EU in 2016-2017. We present the choices that European leaders must make in the years ahead and explain how these could shape the Union’s medium to long-term development. To illustrate how different policy choices interact, we have drawn up two fictitious scenarios of how the EU could evolve in the next 10 years.
The immediate economic concerns that dominated the European agenda in 2008-2014 are lessening. The cyclical upswing in the European economy, however, must not make governments complacent about the need for reforms. Faced with stagnating or shrinking working-age populations, European countries simply must fix their productivity problem to generate long-term growth. In innovation and digitization, Europeans often seem obsessed with data privacy and protection rather than grasping new opportunities. The European Commission’s laudable attempts to integrate and improve EU markets – for example, for energy and capital – have so far been slow to get off the ground. The arrival of millions of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees is a great opportunity for an ageing Europe, but only if governments, together with the private sector, act swiftly to help the new arrivals find jobs.

Nature-based solutions simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits by bringing more nature and natural features and processes into cities, landscapes and seascapes. This report presents the main findings of the Horizon 2020 Expert Group on ‘Nature-Based Solutions and Re-Naturing Cities’.

The Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Advisory Group has produced a report which proposes to put FET at the nucleus of the European Innovation Council.

The FET Advisory Group has been set up at the beginning of H2020 with the mandate to give advice to the Commission regarding the objectives and the scientific and innovation priorities of Future and Emerging Technologies.

As a result of discussions extending over more than a year, the group has now produced the report "The future of FET: a possible nucleus for the European Innovation Council", which proposes to put FET at the nucleus of the European Innovation Council.

Earth observation data and information are vital to allow decision-makers and society in general to take informed decisions about climate, energy, food security, natural hazards, health and other societal challenges. These challenges are complex, interrelated, cross-border in nature and interdependent at the global scale and therefore coordination is essential to avoid duplication of efforts and reduce observational gaps.

The European Commission together with 27 EU Member States are active members of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), which provides a global voluntary framework where governments and participating organisations can coordinate their strategies and investments in the field of Earth observation while promoting full and open access to data and information through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS).

This booklet provides a snapshot of EU-funded projects which illustrate how European research and innovation contribute to this global initiative, showcasing the potential of international collaboration in science for diplomacy.