FLAGSHIP has been built on a fundamental premise. Significant progress has been made in recent years in the field of FLA, both in the development of methods and tools and in the production of a considerable wealth of visionary material. The FLASGHIP consortium is fully aware of such progress - to which its partners have in fact individually and collectively largely contributed - and FLASGHIP intends to "keep up the good work" in further developing and refining FLA concepts and methods, and generating additional visions of the future, at both global and sectoral level.
On the other hand, FLASGHIP considers that the fundamental priority must now be placed on "putting FLA knowledge to work", and applying it to the formulation of policies that effectively address the global challenges facing the EU (and in fact the world as a whole) in a long term, multidisciplinary perspective.
The objectives of FLAGSHIP are: i) Understanding and assessing the state of the art of forward looking methodologies in relation to Grand Societal Challenges (GSC) and developing tools and modelling frameworks beyond state of the art; ii) Applying an enhanced set of forward looking methods and tools to support EU policies, by analysing reference and alternative scenarios of long-term demographic, legal, economic, social and political evolutions of Europe, in a world context, and assessing potential progress in technological and social innovation; iii) Driving change, producing a set of EU-relevant policy recommendations on the potential of the EU for transition and change. In relation to these objectives the project will: i) take stock of the existing forward looking studies: a review will be done of the central questions, key trends, critical uncertainties and scenario frameworks; ii) proceed to apply and combine enhanced qualitative and quantitative methods mastered by the project partners in a coherent framework, producing a combination of GSC-driven qualitative and quantitative scenarios - coping with a range of possible global paradigm shifts and geo-political changes - and engaging
a community of experts and stakeholders in a scenario thinking and assessment exercise; iii) focus further on EU policy responses to emerging transition challenges, and the potential role of EU in shaping global governance as well as new territorial dynamics within the continent, aiming to deliver policy recommendations to support the formulation of strategic EU policy agendas. The project will be articulated in 10 WPs, providing a consistent sequence of research activities with a good balance between methodological developments and policy applications addressing long term GSC scenarios. 15 partners representing 10 MS including 2 NMS. 4 stakeholders workshops, 1 final conference, wide and diversified range of participation, communication and dissemination actions and media.