WHAT:
The German-French Forum for the Future is a new institution of Franco-German cooperation. One half of the joint secretariat is located at the think tank France Stratégie in Paris, the other at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies e.V. (IASS) in Potsdam and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

In accordance with article 22 of the Aachen Treaty, signed by President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel, it will bring together people from France and Germany to address social transformation processes. The two governments have entrusted the Forum with the task of developing visions of the future that strike a balance between environmental, societal, technological and economic considerations with a view to improving quality of life in both France and Germany. 

HOW:
Every 12 to 18 months, the Forum will issue policy recommendations on a given theme, using the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as guideline. The Forum’s Secretaries will present these recommendations to the Franco-German Ministerial Council and the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. To this end, the German-French Forum for the Future will conduct research activities with selected local initiatives that successfully address these transformation processes in France and Germany. Additionally, cross-border dialogue formats between the initiatives and other actors will serve to improve the collective understanding of social change processes and the ability to steer them towards a sustainable future. Based on this, recommendations for action to the Franco-German Council of Ministers and the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly will be developed in a so-called resonance space; these recommendations will also be accessible to the public. The Impact Lab was invited to act as strategic consultant to help the secretariat of the Forum develop the strategies for collaborative innovation in a multi-stakeholder setting. To this end, in collaboration with the international organisation Missions Publiques, we are invited to support the leadership of the project with our expertise and act as independent evaluators of the process.

Photo and graphic copyright: https://www.iass-potsdam.de/en/german-french-forum-for-the-future