Democratic Governance

The European Union and its member states have faced almost a decade of political tumult. If the EU is to move beyond crisis management towards political and economic renewal, a prerequisite is to understand better the foundation of public and ‘elite’ attitudes to the EU, and where these align and diverge.
This paper is based on a unique survey conducted between December 2016 and February 2017 in 10 countries that polled two groups: a representative sample of 10,000 members of the public; and a sample of over 1,800 of Europe’s ‘elite’, individuals in positions of influence from politics, the media, business and civil society at local, regional, national and European levels.

Preparing Europe for the next 25 years is a contribution from the Secretary General of the European Parliament to the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS). ESPAS provides a framework for cooperation and consultation at administrative level, on a voluntary basis, between the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, and the European External Action Service, with the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee as observers, to work together on medium and long-term trends facing or relating to the European Union.

These guidelines correspond to a significant degree to policy priorities established by the Members of the European Parliament during the seventh parliamentary term through a large number of reports and resolutions which received broad support in the plenary. President Juncker's ten points are also broadly in line with several of the objectives set out in the 'Strategic Agenda for the Union in Times of Change', adopted in the European Council in June 2014 when it proposed Mr Juncker to the Parliament as its candidate for President of the Commission.
The potential economic benefits of new European-level action may be measured in terms of additional gross domestic product (GDP) generated or in savings in (current or potential) public expenditure or other expenditure, through a more efficient allocation of resources in the economy as a whole.
The analysis set out in this document suggests that there could be very significant economic gains of these kinds, amounting in time to a maximum achievable potential gain of approximately €1.7 trillion per year, on the basis that Mr Juncker's ten priorities were to be fully implemented in a form consistent with various policy requests made to date by the Parliament.

Latin America must strengthen its ability to plan forward and deepen its strategic reflection if it is to govern better and improve the design of public policies.
Achieving this may require countries in the region to familiarize themselves with global scenarios and to explore the types and scale of challenges that they might confront. A national perspective is not sufficient, a global vision is essential. Globalization creates a stream of effects that cannot be controlled by individual countries. With an outlook that takes into consideration the rest of the world, Latin American governments could improve their capacity to anticipate events and, when those events occur, to effectively respond to uncertainty and rapid change. Through strategic planning that envisions a myriad of diverse situations, countries of the region may be able to skirt damage or even identify advantageous responses. In effect, human action might alter trajectories in ways that could bring the region closer to desirable outcomes. In this study, Sergio Bitar sets out to explore the nature and potential impact of trends and scenarios that could emerge and he makes recommendations for building anticipatory capacity. The first part of this report summarizes the global trends and scenarios [...] the scenarios are based on reports from leading research centers in developed countries. In the second part, he identifies
where Latin America—both individual countries and the region as a whole—should focus. He then underscores the fields in which countries of the region should strengthen their capacity for foresight study.