 Samuel Beckett wrote in the novel Murphy on the famous line When that the Sun shown having no alternative on the nothing new He clearly didn't have the European Union in in mind because in the European Union The Sun shines when it shines and it shines more often than then one presumes on something new almost every day And we have certainly had a Huge number of challenges to address in the in the past couple of years, especially However today, I would like to place events in Europe in the context of the broader Recallabration of our political and economic Systems around the world in fact, which is only magnified by the EU specific features of our governance Framework, I would also like to look at some of the key global trends and understand how they affect the chances for Europe's reincarnation and Finally, I will argue that Trends may be trends, but we can still shape the outcomes with a fair degree of success and For that we need foresight and an anticipation So let me start with the with the economy first I think when it comes to to the economy the key question to understand is whether The exceptional human progress which we have seen in the past Two centuries will continue or not One of my favorite graphs shows the rise of shows the national income over the past millennium And and that curve is flaps All the time until the Industrial Revolution when it starts to go pretty steeply Upwards now the question to which we we need to find an answer is whether that steep rise Will continue or or not? Because there are many obviously who argue that we are now entering a period in which Low growth will be the new normal in advanced economies and And if that is the case if this exceptionalism of the past two decades is indeed over Then we would need to Understand whether we will be content with simply preserving Humanities achievements to date Or would angst and dissatisfaction Prevail Are we genetically modified already to continue to strive for for progress or can we be happy enough with the fruits of what has been What has been achieved? reassuringly even though there are there are lots of proponents of the secular stagnation Hypothesis I think there are ample reasons to believe that everything is in our is in our hands and of course productivity is key to Output potential and productivity is not Only force of nature it is something that we can that we can shape given for example that productivity and and investment are Correlated we can stimulate productivity growth if we increase investment And this is exactly what we are now trying to do in the European Union with the investment plan The European Fund for Strategic Investments, which is a success story of the past of the past year We have been able to mobilize about 100 billion euro in investment Using EU budget Guarantee their projects which are starting in almost all member states in 26 member states There are now projects finance from the the FC from the FC funds similarly the digital is Key to productivity if there is one reason that explains why the United States Is ahead of us in productivity growth? It is the adoption of Digital means the way that American companies have been have been able to make digital revolution part and parcel of what of what they do But there's something else I think going on in the economic exchange and and it makes our economies more interactive and Yeah, and and walk connected and the rise of Platforms and collaborative economy are perhaps the best Expressions of this phenomenon, but it takes place also in in the more conventional areas We have integration of product and service markets taking place on an unprecedented Scale to the extent that the two have become Indistinguishable we cannot speak any longer of product and service markets as two separate Branches of the of the economy. They are connected When we look at the map of European growth from the micro perspective what we see Interestingly, is there is that there are patches of highly performing highly productive ferns? surrounded by a sea of underperforming ferns Which have not managed to raise the productivity So we need to take that into account when Deciding on the allocation of resources because we need to enable those highly performing Ferns to to grow but we also need to support those underperforming so that they Rise their productivity levels and then there are issues of of how we we measure prosperity which are Extremely important and so and our our ways of measurements have been unfairly static Although high-level commissions have dealt with the issue of moving beyond the GDP There is little indication that it is around the corner As the economists put it in in an April Issue, which would you prefer to be a medieval Monarch or a modern office worker? The king had everything had the finest silks had the finest foods He had armies of servants But he was still a martyr to to thank He was prone to fatal infections It took him a week by courage to travel between palaces and he was tired listening to the same gestures So the economists concluded that life as a 21st century Office drone looks more appealing once you think about modern dentistry antibiotics air travel Smartphones and and youtube So in other words, we need to be able to express what we mean by prosperity In in an altogether different fashion Now the recalibration of the economy is closely related to a fundamental shift In the way that politics is is exercised including in the oldest democracies We had been warrants of advances of populism Before but it is really now that it has arrived at our doorstep It is partly a delayed reaction to the economic crisis and partly a function of technological and societal change Which among other things lowers the barriers of entry to political activity You can set up yourself in politics much more easily than at any time in in the past It also makes our our public life ultra-transparent when we know pretty much everything about everyone who is involved in in in politics Now in the 1981 classic American politics promise of disharmony Samuel Huntington predicted that around this time We would be entering a period that he calls He called creed or passion his own term for moralizing distrust of organized power and as Huntington explained In in terms of american beliefs government is supposed to be a egalitarian Be participatory see open D non-coercive And he responsive to the demands of individual and groups The problem is that you cannot That no government Can deliver all these things and remain a government So the tension between power and and legitimacy Is really of fundamental importance To our democratic debate at the moment and it is accentuated by by this age of scarcity in which we find ourselves in in the low growth environment and when we look at the european issues from Authorization of glyphosite, which is what the college of commissioners has dealt with now for several times Onto t-tip. It's it's really It's really another expression of that same Tension between power and and and legitimacy And it will need to be resolved and addressed. I think this issue in particular will not go away by itself So populism exists where where voters are misled to believe that the world is a simpler place Then it actually is Of course complexity is on the rise If you read european council conclusions or european commission communications The language has has gotten much simpler But these are still pretty complicated things and and not everyone will Will understand what is what is at stake? Populism is is in that context about suggesting that there are shortcuts to prosperity and security Where such shortcuts do not exist As androkeen has written in the age of misinformation. It is more difficult Than ever for voters to know what is true and what is not true However populism, I believe should also be understood as a signaling mechanism It tells us that something is not right that problem exists, which we might have overlooked By and large voters have this incredible Instinct of knowing what is right for the nation or society perhaps not always in the short term but But more so in the medium to long term, but I think that instinct exists So populism should be read as As as much a problem for for the mainstream as for anybody else And it is it is it is not incurable. I mean there are studies that have been done recently about The angst that american voters feel in the context of the current Election campaign and the conclusion that has been reached is that it's it's mostly about politics not about economics We we presume that it is about economics. It's about difficulties of the middle class But people say it's it's mostly political An associated press poll has showed that americans feel pretty fine about their financial stability But at the same time they are intensely angry about the functioning of the government So the answer I believe must lie in greater inclusion Um, there must also be more civic and political education Research shows that many people don't understand the concept of the interest rates in advanced in advanced economies And if you don't understand the concept of the interest rate, which is not the most sophisticated of all economic concepts And how how will you understand what quantitative easing? amongst So I think a massive effort needs to be Undertaken to create a more fertile ground for evidence-based policy because Evidence-based policy is the only response to To populism that that we can think of But we need to prepare ourselves for for it much much better Now the political and economic reorientation in europe is taking place in the context of broader Trends to which europe also needs to Respond and this is a combination of headwinds and and and tail tail winds at the same at the same time Let me speak about three of them. I think from the global perspective the most Important one has to do with the finality of our resources Researches argue that we are entering the Anthropocene a new epoch when the human Footprint would have a significant impact on the planet's geology if Our traces are to be discovered by the future generations By the archaeologists of whatever 30th century Then our age will be the age of concrete We are already using 1.6 resources of the planet And we are heading towards using two planets by the year 2030 Just imagine the impact that the additional 2.5 billion people that we are expecting by 2050 will have On our resources, especially that all of them will share our aspirations, which is a new phenomenon 20 years ago people in many developing countries were broadly happy with what they had But then the smartphone arrived And immediately they were able to connect and see What life could be like in the more developed and more advanced countries And this started this incredible rise of human aspiration that we witness today So I think these demands of sustainability will be really key for us in the future And in Europe we have managed to decouple Carbon emissions and growth, which is a huge achievement We are not trying to sell it to the rest of the world But we have not decoupled growth and materials We have not decoupled growth and resources So that's the agenda for the future to link circular economy models with our low carbon ambitions What it means in practical terms is extending the life of mobile phones From average two years to let's say five years I think we could survive with that It could also mean car sharing One car that is shared can replace five to 20 cars, depending on the exact model And with enormous implications in terms of emission savings Milton Friedman once said that what is unsustainable will not be sustained And I think there is a lot of truth in that rather simple statement Another key trend has to do with demography In the EU it is the question of rising life expectancy and declining fertility Which is obviously a challenge for our pension and health systems We have at the commission our flagship aging report And that aging report says that by 2030 We will have two people working age supporting each person Over 65, as opposed to four at the moment in 2016 So just imagine what this is going to mean to our pension systems And many member states are actually undoing the reforms to the pension systems that they had undertaken during the crisis The rise of the global middle class has been described in many foresight Reports including the flagship us national intelligence council global trends 2030 reports As one of the the key trends for for the century Well, I think that trends remains valid in the sense of In the sense that aspirations that have been invoked are here to stay And I spoke about one dimension of it But let me say a few words about another in a recent poll For the bbc work service It turned out that a sense of global citizenship is strongest in the emerging countries In Nigeria 73% of the local population Believes that they are primarily global citizens And only in the second order priority, Nigerians It's now the other way around in the advanced countries, especially Germany that there is less sense of global citizenship And in this sense is invoked with the with the vengeance in the developing in the emerging countries However, the future of of this great global convergence is very uncertain And the catching up process has stopped in the course of this recent crisis Although some countries have done better than others India's demand for oil has just overtaken China's demand for oil so you can see that there are there are there are shifting grounds In terms of who is doing better and who is doing worse But the world bank has just calculated that It is now only 47% of the developing countries that are catching up with the United States And it was 83% in 2007 So the catching up process has has slowed down However, the trend of trends for me is the pervasive influence of technological change on our societies And there is a fascinating debate among experts as to whether innovation whether we have seen the best of innovation or if the best is still to come I think that when we see medical teams Helping parallel paralyzed people walk Or if we see teams of engineers in in europe Trying to put together a flying car as some are doing Which is what henry fords and dream dreamt about say in the 19 In the 1930s We would be forgiven for thinking that there is no end to innovation Even space technology is now is now more and more accessible with new zealand being one of The world leaders for rocket launches So what is what is I think important is that innovation affects pretty profoundly The way we function and the way we relate to each other And in europe in particular, we should not become dormant to This debate about the end of innovation because innovation is remaking industries the americans Are now firmly pushing into industry 4.0 And europe has to be ready for it as well. We have to be much more geared towards experimentation And an entrepreneurial culture of risk taking As wane gritsky, a canadian hockey player once put it A good player goes where the puck is A great player goes where the puck will be And I think we will need to understand where the puck will be And we'll need to go in that in that direction New technologies and digitalization are finally changing profoundly The nature of work and The types of jobs that will be needed Are are affected and by whom they will be done Walmart is now in the process of developing a drone system that will replace jobs of inventory quality assurance employees So these types of developments obviously fuel fears of automation And and there is a reason for it. OECD has estimated that nine percent of jobs in the advanced economies Are at a high risk of being automated While out of 25 Percent other jobs Half of the tasks will change due to automation. So that this is a this is a profile Change which we are witnessing And of course it's a mixed it's a mixed blessing because there will be new opportunities and but there will also be Challenges to which we will need to adjust One of the implications is that we will have more diverse working histories In the united states the average Worker stays on the job for 4.4 years But among the millennials 91 of them Expect to stay in the job for less than 3 years 3 years time So if they continue with this trend they will have 15 to 20 jobs in their in their lifetime And what what this means is that we need to rethink our welfare policies And along a lifelong approach What it means that we need to customize welfare policies so as to make it better suited For the needs of individual Worker that will need to have different skill sets During a lifetime and that will also need to carry their welfare benefits With them as they go along Now facing these tectonic shifts Europe has my view two main tasks one is to build resilience And the other one is to renew the social contract Among our citizens Resilience is the term that comes from from physics. It's about a body being hit It's about absorbing the shock as and it's about releasing the energy So basically it's about how we prepare for Shocks for crises which are our new normal How we handle them and then how we recover from them And I think much of what we do in the european union at present is about resilience First of all the economic and social associated with completion of the economic and monetary union Primarily through the banking union Secondly recasting our migration and and asylum policy And then the security agenda with Last year's proposals and and this year's proposal for the security union And finally This will all lead to the new global strategy Which will be proposed at the end of the month So the euro and the migration crises are to my mind Twin challenges which will shape europe's identity in in future years And there are strong parallels in in the way in which they were addressed In a sense that in both cases we had an external shock In both cases we were unprepared For what was to to come and in both cases the whatever it takes moment arrived In the case of the euro crisis This was mario dragui's statements that built on agreements concerning the banking union And in the migration crisis, this was the eu turkey deal from the spring of this year Plus the the entire package which came which came with it However, of course resilience in itself will not will not suffice if we If we don't have a broader sense of renewal in in europe And the latter i think is is entirely Is entirely associated with the way that citizens embrace sustainability and technological Change and the guidance for all that Lies in foresight. I think we live in in in age of Foresight where those who are better prepared For the future will Will will will win But foresight by by itself is not enough We need to imagine how foresight can become part of a transformative A transformative project that can win traction with our citizens Eisenhower said plans are not enough but Planning is Eisenhower said plans are useful, but planning is indispensable So that points to the importance of of process as well. We need to make foresight part of our public debates And much of Our preparedness is about learning the lessons of the previous crisis I think we have learned To a sufficient degree the lessons of great depression The u.s. In particular had a pretty comprehensive response to this crisis Building on the experience from the 1930s our Responsive our response was less comprehensive, but but what we see now is is a convergence of outcomes As jason foreman president obama's a president obama's economic advisor Puts it what? What unifies us today is the commonality of challenges across the atlantic We might have had different reactions to the crisis The the americans might have emerged Quicker from the recession, but we are now pretty much in the same Situation because we face the same the same challenges and he mentions productivity growth inequality a labor market participation as the ones that travel him most now to end on on a broader note, I think that what What is an essential part of foresight is how our vision Resonates with that of others in in in the world And I think our generation is uniquely aware of The fragility which global interdependence Brings Some of the threats will be systemic at an existential level Mark and wreath wrote Astronomer royal in the united kingdom wrote a few years ago a book the last century In which he argued that we have a 50 percent chance of surviving the 21st century given the number of existential risks ahead and we can name A few of them from pandemics through cybercrime to proliferation of weapons of master's traction So that that will need to be addressed, but I think equally The issue which Which we face during the crisis, but from which we are slowly Emerging is our loss of faith in the ability to change the world I think this rise of the rest paradigm has been has been readily and too easily accepted by by the west and has led to lack of willingness to engage In beyond our our borders and this is now changing I think the new global strategy which will come at the end of the month the eu global strategy Will will restate our Commitments to the european values, but also to our interest and the word partnership Will will reappear in the documents a number of of a number of times But I think that the real reason why We will our arguments will resonate with the rest of the world has to do with the quality of our governance and the quality and attractiveness of our democracies And this is where we needs to fight the post truth politics with politics of of truth as George Burns the actor said Look to the future because this is where you will spend the rest of your life I think that's that sentence hasn't lost its its meaning especially that we know Much more about the future than than the previous Generations and we simply make we need to make Good advantage of it. Thanks very much