Uniao Europeia preocupada com o seu futuro (havera futuro para a UE?) - documentos de discussao

Alertado pela mensagem do economista e blogueiro Mansueto Almeida, que está partindo hoje para a Europa para participar de dois dias de debates sobre o futuro da Europa no mundo globalizado, fui buscar os documentos, não linkados em seu post (aqui).
Descobri um exercício do qual sei existirem exemplos anteriores: a Estratégia de Lisboa, por exemplo, que elaborada em 2000, previa para a Europa, em 2010, apresentar-se como a mais avançada sociedade do conhecimento do mundo, o que, sabemos, revelou-se completamente errado.
Mas, enfim, sempre se deve continuar tentando...
 Minha impressão é a de que os europeus ainda não decaíram o suficiente, que ainda falta muito desastre e retrocesso para que eles se convençam, finalmente, que o seu modelo social não se sustenta sem um alto crescimento da produtividade, e que as atitudes auto-satisfatórias que eles assumem são uma cortina de fumaça sobre os problemas reais.
Por isso não hesito em prever um pouco mais de decadência.
Mas, vamos ao exercício intelectual, neste link:
http://europa.eu/espas/pdf/espas_report_ii_01_en.pdf
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The European Union needs a strategic capacity to carry out effective foresight across key long-term trends shaping society. This has led to the creation of the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS), a unique inter-institutional project aimed at strengthening the EU's efforts in the crucial area of forward planning. ESPAS brings together the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Secretariat General of the Council of the European Union and the European External Action Service to strengthen the Union's collective administrative capacity to identify and analyse the key trends and challenges, and the resulting policy choices, which are likely to confront Europe and the wider world in the decades ahead.

More

The European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) was initiated in 2010, when a pilot project launched by the European Parliament laid the foundations for cooperation and dialogue between the four participating organisations. The result of this pilot was the publication of a report in the spring of 2012 by the European Union Institute for Strategic Studies (EUISS) entitled 'Global Trends 2030 – Citizens in an Interconnected and Polycentric World'  [5 MB] which assessed the long-term political and economic environment facing the EU over the next 20 years. The report identified several global trends that will shape the world in 2030. They include:

• The empowerment of the individual, which may contribute to a growing sense of  belonging to a single human community;
• Greater stress on sustainable development against a backdrop of greater resource scarcity and persistent poverty, compounded by the consequences of climate change;
• The emergence of a more polycentric world, which could also be characterised by a shift of power away from states;
• Growing governance gaps as the mechanisms for inter-state relations may fail to respond adequately to global public demands.

In 2011, the EP gave the go-ahead for a second stage in the project – a so-called 'Preparatory Action' – with a view to putting in place by 2014 a permanent inter-institutional system to identify and analyse long-term trends.

In 2012, three inter-institutional working groups were set up to oversee an intensive analytical process, including outreach to those interested in engaging with ESPAS,  in order to draft trend reports in three key fields: the economy, society, and governance and power. The process will result, in 2014, in the publication of a detailed appraisal of long-term global trends and the challenges and options for the period 2014/2019. This will be submitted to the incoming Presidents of the EU institutions.

Mission

By 2014, when ESPAS’ final report is published, the institutions’ shared commitment to collective, strategic thinking should have laid the ground for more permanent cooperation and dialogue. The report itself will help define strategic options for the next EU institutional cycle – from 2014 to 2019 – and beyond.

Task force

ESPAS is steered by a ‘quadrilateral’ inter-institutional Task Force bringing together the European Parliament, the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) of the European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS). The Task Force has a supervisory role, while the shared nature of ESPAS’ political ownership also provides a basis for a permanent foresight capacity.

Legal basis

• ESPAS Pilot Project budget amendment  [133 KB]
• ESPAS Preparatory Action budget amendment  [17 KB]

Draft Report on Forward Policy Planning and long-term trends: budgetary implications of capacity-building

• Annex 1  [27 KB]
• Annex 2  [207 KB]
• Annex 3  [216 KB]