Intergenerational Fairness | EU Policy Lab

A story-based foresight process revealing what citizens expect Europe to protect, pass on, and renew.

Photo by Tamara Govedarovic on Unsplash

What does it take to ensure fairness between generations - in the long term, and in

everyday life?

• How can citizen perspectives help shape policies that are fair across time?

• When asked about their preferred futures – to what extent do people think of

• sustainable practices that will ensure access to rights and resources for the generations to come?

• How is the concept of ‘intergenerational fairness’ evolving as we face major environmental, demographic and technological shifts? Should future fairness include non-human lives, like ecosystems or artificial entities?

As part of the #OurFutures initiative, over 4,000 EU citizens shared short stories about their preferred futures for 2040. A selection of 700 stories was analysed for references to intergenerational fairness. These stories were first self-interpreted by the authors themselves, generating structured insight into how people perceive care, responsibility, and fairness between age groups and across generations.

The analysis sheds light on how citizens connect large-scale transformations (climate,

economy, demography) with everyday concerns about dignity, legacy, and shared futures. It also surfaces key tensions: How to reconcile fast change with long-term care? How to balance the needs of younger and older generations in ageing societies? What counts as “sustainable,” and for whom?

This project, led by the EU Policy Lab with support from Voices That Count, shows how

large-scale narrative collection can support policy foresight without flattening citizen

contributions into binary choices or slogans. By letting people frame their own visions and make sense of them in their own terms, this approach respects complexity while still allowing for pattern detection.

#OurFutures is an open-data base, designed by the Competence Centre of Foresight of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, to inspire a collective dialogue about the future of Europe. More information here.  

Want to contribute your own vision?

Anyone in the EU can write a short story about what they hope to see in Europe’s future. You can participate anonymously in any of the 24 EU languages. Organisations can also host a workshop using the same tool—we’re happy to support you in setting one up.

All stories become part of a growing, open dataset that can inform future policy and research on what kind of Europe citizens want to build together.