Global mega-trends: Scanning the post-coronavirus horizon

The European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) – the strategic foresight network of the European Union institutions – offers a valuable ‘free space’ in which to conduct a genuine continental, and potentially global, conversation about where the world is heading over the medium to long run. It was initiated by the European Parliament almost a decade ago in order to help promote a serious discussion of this kind. The third ESPAS Global Trends Report, Global Trends to 2030: Challenges and Choices for Europe, as published in April 2019. Transposing into the European context the kind of strategic foresight analysis undertaken in the United States by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) on global trends since the end of the 1990s, it aims to sketch the global and longer-term backdrop against which Europeans will seek to shape their future. The coronavirus pandemic broke out less than a year later.