Annex I / Socio-Economic Sciences and the Humanities

Objective

Generating an in-depth, shared understanding of complex and interrelated socio-economic challenges Europe is confronted with, such as growth, employment and competitiveness, social cohesion, social, cultural and educational challenges in an enlarged EU and sustainability, demographic change, migration and integration, quality of life and global interdependence, in particular with the view of providing an improved knowledge base for policies in the fields concerned.

Rationale

Europe has a strong and high quality research base in socio-economic and socio-cultural sciences and the humanities fields. The diversity of approaches within the EU in the economic, social, political and cultural domains provides a highly fertile ground for research in these fields at EU-level. There is a high European added value in collaborative research addressing European socio-economic and socio-cultural issues in the areas mentioned. First, the issues and challenges concerned are of high priority at the European level and are addressed by Community policies. Second, comparative research across EU or other countries offers a particularly effective tool as well as important learning opportunities across countries and regions.

Third, EU-level research has particular advantages in being able to develop Europe-wide data collection and to employ the multiple perspectives needed to understand complex issues. Finally, the development of a genuinely European socio-economic knowledge base on these key challenges will make an essential contribution to promoting their shared understanding across the European Union and, most significantly, on the part of the European citizens.

The activities to be supported are listed below and are expected to contribute significantly to improve the formulation, implementation, impacts and assessments of policy and the definition of regulatory measures in a wide range of areas such as economic, social, cultural, education and training, gender equality, enterprise, international trade, consumer, external relations, scientific and technological, official statistics policies and the creation of the area of freedom, security and justice. In addition, opportunities will be provided to address emerging socio-economic challenges as well as to undertake research on new or unforeseen policy needs. Use may also be made of social platforms to discuss future research agendas.

Activities

• Growth, employment and competitiveness in a knowledge society: developing and integrating research on the issues affecting growth, socio-economic stability, employment and competitiveness, covering topics such as innovation, education including life-long learning and the role of scientific and other knowledge and intangible goods on a global scale, youth and youth policy, adaptation of labour market policies, and national institutional contexts.

• Combining economic, social and environmental objectives in a European perspective: by addressing the two key and highly interrelated issues of continuing evolution of European socio-economic models and economic and social and regional cohesion in an enlarged EU, taking into account sustainability and the protection of the environment, sustainable urban planning, the interaction between environment, energy and society, the role of cities and metropolitan regions, and the socio-economic impact of European policies and legislation.

• Major trends in society and their implications: such as demographic change including ageing and its effects on pension systems, migration and integration, analysing the implications of the demographic change for urban development; lifestyles, work, families, reconciling professional and family life, gender issues, disabilities issues, health and quality of life; economic consumer protection; inequalities; criminality; the role of business in society and population diversity, ethnicity, religious pluralism, cultural interactions multicultural issues and issues related to protection of fundamental rights and the fight against discrimination of any kind.

• Europe in the world: understanding changing interactions, cross cultural relations and interdependencies between world regions, including developing regions and their implications; and addressing emerging threats and risks without undermining human rights, freedom and well-being, and fostering peace.

• The citizen in the European Union: in the context of the future development of the enlarged EU, addressing the issues of achieving a sense of democratic "ownership" and active participation by the peoples of Europe; effective and democratic governance at all levels including economic and legal governance and the role of civil society; research for building a shared understanding and respect for Europe's diversities and commonalities in terms of culture, religions, cultural heritage, institutions and legal systems, history, languages and values as building elements of our European multi-cultural identity and heritage.

• Socio-economic and scientific indicators: their use in policy and its implementation and monitoring, the improvement of existing indicators, techniques to analyse them and the development of new ones for this purpose and for the evaluation of research programmes, including indicators based on official statistics.

• Foresight activities on major science, technology and related socio-economic issues such as the future demographic trends and the globalization of knowledge, the dissemination of knowledge, and evolution of research systems, as well as of the future developments in and across major research domains and scientific disciplines.