The College of Europe Development Office organised on 15 September 2020 an online Foresight Exercise named: “Anticipating future crises (and opportunities): follow up” within the EU-funded project El-Hiwar II.
It follows a first Foresight Exercise organised within the project on 27-28 August 2019 which introduced participants to foresight techniques, discussed their applicability in their daily work and simulated a foresight workshop in which trends, scenarios and game-changing situations relevant to Euro-Arab relations were discussed.
With the view of continuing this strategic engagement with the League of Arab States (LAS) and supporting its institutional capacities, this follow-up workshop gathered the same group of participants to review how the international and regional agenda has changed in the last year and what implications this may have for Euro-Arab relations. This 2020 Exercise included an analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis but also other game-changers and trends.
The workshop was delivered by Florence GAUB (Deputy Director of the EUISS) and Eduard SOLER (Team Leader of the Project).
Samia BIBARS, Director for the Crisis Management Department at the LAS, mentioned in her opening remarks the huge impact of the COVID-19 crisis in the Arab countries, especially at economic level and hence the relevance of this follow-up workshop.
Eduard SOLER opened the workshop explaining how the current circumstances confirm that foresight exercises are useful so that one can be better prepared to react to any circumstance. He also expressed that a key goal of the workshop was to see if the COVID-19 crisis has brought new trends or if on the contrary it accelerated trends that were already detected and predictable.
From her side, Florence GAUB emphasized the importance of continuing to think strategically for the future, even if in the present we are facing a crisis that could lead us to only focus on it.
We would like to thank the League, the participants and the trainers for this fruitful workshop.
El-Hiwar II: Training and Information Course on Euro-Arab Diplomacy, is a project funded by European Commission DG NEAR and implemented by the College of Europe. It is conceived as a dialogue tool for the EU and the LAS to support strengthened work relations and to learn about each other's functioning, mechanisms and policies.
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This project is funded by the European Union