Fundamental Rights in Foresight

This project is aimed at supporting FRA in providing advice to the EU institutions and Member States on how to foster a more focused attention on fundamental rights (FR) and on how to better integrate FR into their foresight work. This is the reason why one part of the project is dedicated to further developing and testing the FRA Foresight Guidance, and a second part to co-creatively implementing a FR foresight with a time horizon of 2040 and thereby applying and testing the principles of the FRA Foresight Guidance.

A main driver for the project is the existence of a gap in foresight practice: fundamental rights are not explicitly considered in foresight activities, though they are an essential component for transformative governance in the European Union and its Member States (MS). The project context is related to the question of how the European Agency responsible for safeguarding fundamental rights in the EU – FRA – can integrate foresight into its advisory capacity for EU institutions? Though FRA already uses foresight approaches in its strategic activities and provides an impressing amount of publicly available anticipatory knowledge, FRA’s self-under-standing does not necessarily include foresight expertise, but rather stresses its core fundamental rights expertise. Therefore, this project answers to the specific demand of FRA that has a twofold need: further integrating foresight into FRA’s work and support in advising others on integrating FR into foresight. Tasks include horizon scanning, retrofitting scenarios, future pathways and stress-testing of the scenarios. Output will be the guidelines in integrating fundamental rights into foresight.

Project background: The need for a project relates to clarifying the question of how the FRA can integrate foresight into the advisory role of the EU institutions. FRA's self-understanding and identity do not necessarily include foresight skills, rather strong skills and expertise in ensuring fundamental rights. There are two aspects to the integration of foresight: an internal perspective on the application of foresight in the FRA's work, and an external perspective on advising stakeholders and partners to integrate a fundamental rights perspective into foresight.
Project purpose: to support the FRA in advising the EU institutions and Member States on how to pay more attention to fundamental rights and how to better integrate them into their own foresight work.
Modalities: further develop and test FRA's foresight guidance and supporting reference materials and tools, such as reference scenarios and stress tests.
Main output: tested and quality-assured fundamental rights