On 20 and 21 April 2026, the workshop "Intergenerational Decision-making in EU Law and Policy" was held in Dublin in the framework of the REXPO project. It addressed the tools, the legal framework, and the conceptual foundations of intergenerational decision-making in different EU policies.
Shifting (geo)political and economic priorities are increasingly pushing the EU to engage in policy fields that carry important implications for current and future generations. The new imperatives of strategic autonomy affect the capacity of the EU to be autonomous and to defend itself but equally its trading prospects and capacities. NextGenerationEU, while intended to prepare for a better future, has also created debt burdening future generations. Yet EU law and policy have lacked so far both a conceptual and a practical framework for intergenerational decision-making. While some recent initiatives, such as the Commission's Intergenerational Fairness Strategy, demonstrate that the topic is gaining traction, scholars and policy-makers have not yet comprehensively engaged with the key issues at stake.
Against this background the workshop has gathered scholars in EU and international law to discuss the legal constraints, the practical implementation and the future prospects of EU intergenerational decision-making. Participants have discussed the meaning and definition of intergenerationality and shared insights from different EU policy areas, including environment, external policies, EU Financial and Economic Governance, digital policy, cohesion and youth policies.
Key takeaways include:
- the need to provide a coherent conceptual framework to define and address the intergenerational and temporal dimension of EU decision-making across the board;
- the recognition that intergenerational decision-making is already a far more structural feature of EU governance than is openly acknowledged;
- the importance of addressing the concrete aspects of intergenerationality through case-studies in different policy areas.
The workshop contributed to shed light on a key aspect of the REXPO project, investigating how recent shifts in regulatory instruments and budgetary governance will have a long-lasting impact on future generations and, therefore, on the future of the EU itself.
The workshop was organised by Maria Patrin (Hertie School, Jacques Delors Centre), Christy-Anne Petit (Dublin City University, DCU) and Marc Steiert (Max-Planck-Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory), with the support of DCU and Hertie School and co-funded by the EU through the REXPO project. The results will be published in a Special Issue on the same topic.