DiCE Scenario Marathon

Differentiated integration and flexibility have been part of the European integration project since its early days and will remain necessity if the EU wants to overcome stalemate and improve the functioning of the European integration process. Therefore, the central question is not whether there will be a differentiated Europe, but which kind of differentiation will or rather should prevail and along which policy fields. Indeed, looking at future scenarios and trajectories of differentiated integration has been among the main tasks of three Horizon 2020 projects centered on differentiation and differentiated integration in Europe: EU Differentiation, Dominance and Democracy (EU3D), Integrating Diversity in the European Union (InDivEU) and EU Integration and Differentiation for Effectiveness and Accountability (EU IDEA), which took place between 2019 and 2022.

Building upon these scenario exercises and gathering other relevant strategic foresight publications, the DiCE Scenario Marathon is a flagship of the Horizon 2020 project Differentiation: Clustering Excellence (DiCE). The initiative brought together stakeholders from EU, national and subnational institutions to participate in a scenario-based exercise for strategic foresight on future opportunities and risks of differentiation in Europe. The focus of the Marathon was on sectoral exercises related to EU differentiation and integration in relevant policy fields – namely the Economic and Monetary Union and the Single Market; EU foreign, security and defence policy; and the Area of freedom, security and justice, including migration. The results of the DiCE Scenario Marathon will be carefully evaluated, structured and further developed in a policy paper on strategic foresight for policy-planners and policy-makers, identifying the conditions under which reforms may fail or succeed, thereby guiding relevant stakeholders on the feasibility and legitimacy of different reform proposals.