EU Policymaking Hub: innovate, anticipate, collaborate

We find ourselves at a crucial point in time, with this Commission having the opportunity to shape our Union for the next 100 years. To enable us to effectively seize this opportunity, we need a vision for how to tackle the big challenges of our time: the climate and digital transitions, and the ever-evolving geopolitical and migration situations.

I believe that the only way we can hope to successfully meet these challenges is to change our way of thinking: less reactive and more proactive.

Our bold Commission Work Programme for 2020 underlines this ambition, incorporating 93 initiatives which will define the coming decades. Notably, these initiatives include the Green Deal, Europe’s digital future, our 21st century industrial policy, a new Security Union strategy and the European Democracy Action Plan. Successfully seeing these proposals through will require a great deal of work, political cooperation and, above all, some top notch policymaking.

And that is why we are launching the EU Policymaking Hub.

Just as our world is changing, and our approach to the future of the EU changes with it, so must our attitude to making policy. We need to prepare ourselves for the work ahead, learning and developing new skills and sharing knowledge so that we can build a Union fit for the future. The EU Policymaking Hub is a critical tool in this effort.

It will help our colleagues, the people who actually write the policy and who represent the most important element in our globally-renowned policymaking system, to further develop their abilities.

Not least, the Hub will help us to make better use of strategic foresight in our policymaking, a big part of my job as Vice-President.

This includes embedding strategic foresight across all Commission policies. In essence, we are striving to use the data at our disposal to identify long-term trends and possible paradigm shifts, and to help us design more future-proof policies.

We have already established a Strategic Foresight Network across the Commission which will be instrumental in identifying important mega-trends and exploring alternative pathways.

But it will be up to the policy officers developing the legislation itself to provide options on how and at what pace to implement our policy priorities. The EU Policymaking hub will help prepare them for this task.

It will enable policy officers to stay up-to-date on all major developments and trends, such as new and evolving digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence or blockchain.

This is all the more important when you consider that, while policymaking is a true profession, it is one taken up by people from all backgrounds. In my cabinet alone, I have a former journalist, a university professor and an engineer engaged in policymaking. It is the same across the Commission.

The EU Policymaking Hub will contribute to bringing this incredible diverse range of expertise together, and reaching an understanding of policymaking that all these different people share. Because it is important that we have a similar vision of what high-quality policy is and how it is made.

The Hub will also boost our efforts to introduce new techniques and best practices. This is something we have already seen have an impact, for example in the use of insights from behavioural science for energy labelling and tobacco packaging.

Finally, the Hub will help us become a more closely-knit community of policymakers. Our colleagues will have a shared understanding of consulting citizens, evaluating legislation, communicating our work and much more.

Let me finish by underlining in concrete terms what the Hub can offer, by looking at what is on offer this spring.

Certainly there is something interesting for everyone. The training sessions stretch from innovation in policymaking to intervention logic and problem definition; and from cybersecurity for policymakers to how to be more anticipative in policymaking. There are talks on EU-NATO relations, Artificial Intelligence and the international role of the Euro. And of course there is a wide range of resources online.

So I am confident that from the very start the Hub will help us to realise the EU of the future.