The copper market has recently been showing unusual instability. New EU legislation, though not always directly related, seems to be having a significant impact on copper prices. This is the case for the Chips Act and the Critical Raw Materials Act - designed to make EU industry more resilient by improving strategic autonomy - but also for laws concerning energy, artificial intelligence and digitalisation. New factors, including looming shortages in strategic raw materials - such as copper -...

Electrification is gaining momentum across many sectors, including transport, buildings and industry, driven by the EU's climate ambition and security of supply. As the cost of renewable energy technologies like solar and wind continues to fall, electrification presents an opportunity to reshape the European economy, enhancing competitiveness and promoting sustainable growth.

The European automotive industry is striving to adapt to market changes driven by the dual green and digital transition. Electrification has become the main strategy for reducing CO2 emissions, especially in urban traffic. At the same time, the average size and weight of cars have greatly increased. Big electric cars are the trend, but are they really the solution? Could better planning and optimisation of resources help?

Robot applications, including 'collaborative robots' - cobots - designed to collaborate with humans, are in high demand, with sales and installation figures constantly on the rise. However, it is necessary to analyse the risks and opportunities of this technology and its possible social, economic, and ethical impacts. The following study presents the current state of collaborative robotics, its benefits, and its disadvantages, with a special emphasis on key aspects such as safety. It presents...

Generative artificial intelligence applications, such as ChatGPT, are powered through complex learning processes by comprehensive datasets of – potentially dubious – human-created content. There are concerns that such tools could develop consciousness and spark emergent behaviour that is, by definition, unpredictable and therefore potentially unsafe. Do these concerns point to a need to look again at the relevant legislation?

The EU depends on imported fossil fuels (gas, oil and coal) for about 56 % of its energy needs (gross energy consumption), which in 2021 represented an energy bill of around EUR 300 billion. The domestic production of renewable energy sources has increased significantly in recent years to 22 % of total demand. The European Union can aspire to achieve energy independence through the deployment of existing and emerging technologies. Electrification, renewables and energy storage could reduce...

Droughts and water scarcity are no longer rare or extreme events in Europe. About 20 % of the European territory and 30 % of Europeans are affected by water stress, especially in Southern Europe but also around some river basins in Western and Central Europe. And climate change will only make matters worse, increasing the frequency of extreme events and making the south even drier.

Diets tailored to our individual characteristics could bring about health benefits but require data on our most personal features, such as our DNA. The promises are many, but so are open questions about the interactions between genes, nutrients, environment and health, and the role of socioeconomic factors behind our food choices. Governance of precision nutrition advice, services and products will include various legislation and policies because of its position between lifestyle and health,...

Recent events have multiplied concerns about potential fragmentation of the internet into a multitude of non-interoperable and disconnected 'splinternets'. Composed of thousands of compatible autonomous systems, the internet is by definition technically divided. Yet, the internet was also designed to be an open and global technical infrastructure. The unity and openness of the internet appear to be under great pressure from political, commercial and technological developments. This report...

Most rare diseases are incurable. Biosensors are a technology that, driven by continuous advances in artificial intelligence, can help disease detection, lower the cost of novel therapies, replace placebo groups in clinical trials and foster patient-centred, personalised (e)-medicine.

To reach the Paris Agreement objective of keeping the global temperature increase well below 2°C, the EU must consider every possible technology to decarbonise its energy production. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers our sun and we can recreate it on Earth. However, even if we overcome the considerable engineering challenges of designing a fusion power plant, there are hard constraints to upscaling fusion power.

Open strategic autonomy ensures the capacity to cope alone if necessary but without ruling out cooperation whenever possible. It relies on foresight to identify threats and ensures resilience by anticipating the required responses. Can the resulting preparedness also prevent crises (or dissuade others from creating them) by normalising internally situations that would else become emergencies?

Over the past 3.8 billion years, nature has been engineering itself to survive. It has also developed efficient and sustainable adaptation mechanisms against changing environmental conditions. To further the EU's political ambitions, could we employ biomimicry to mitigate climate change and achieve climate neutrality?

In this podcast we explore the potential ecological benefits of increasing our capacity to store energy, especially from renewable sources. As the availability of some renewable energy sources is variable and intermittent, devising new energy storage capacities could ensure energy security and reliability and help the EU in its efforts to achieve climate neutrality by 2050.

As the European Commission prepares to launch a much awaited revised EU pharmaceutical strategy, two recent studies by the European Parliament's Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) advance possible options to tackle current weaknesses in drug development and ensure access to high-quality medicines, including the creation of large-scale European biomedical infrastructure, and a series of targeted strategies to improve EU health research coordination and reprioritise areas of...

By 2050, an estimated two thirds of the world population will live in urban areas. Could vertical farming help feed this growing urban population sustainably by reducing the demand for agricultural land and shortening the travel distance between food production and consumption?

As AI spreads into workplaces, workers and employers are increasingly confronted with applications and software that affect labour relations. While AI systems could be introduced with the explicit aim of improving working conditions, this cannot be expected in general and evidence suggests that it may be the exception. In this podcast, we'll talk about the impacts that artificial intelligence applications may have on our workplaces and how policymakers and legislators in the EU will need to...

Quantum technologies could be a game-changer in the digital transformation of health care. By enabling much faster and more complex data analysis, they could open the door to the accelerated discovery and development of novel therapeutics, improved diagnostics and treatments, including for rare and complex diseases, genuinely personalised medicine, and better data-driven health policy planning. However, as is also the case in other sectors, quantum technologies come with risks, particularly...

Antimicrobial-resistant infections are predicted to become the second biggest cause of death worldwide by 2050. Despite increasing investment in the development of new antimicrobials, awareness campaigns on antimicrobial misuse and abuse, and monitoring of antimicrobial use and resistance in animals, humans and the environment, antimicrobial resistance continues to grow and the last three decades have not seen even one novel antimicrobial class reach the market. Could the answer lie in a...

One language disappears every two weeks, and up to 90 % of existing languages could be gone by the turn of the century. Globalisation, social and economic pressures and political options can determine whether a language survives. Multilingualism is a cornerstone of the European project, with 24 official and 60 minority languages. In a digital era, ensuring digital language equality can help preserve linguistic diversity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been under the limelight of so strong political and social debate that its suitability for its main original purpose of improving supply chain efficiency may come up as a surprise; but, what if, under the actual situation of stress artificial intelligence really can provide solutions for strategic sectors significantly improving their capacity to cope with pressure? More specifically, can the agri-food sector benefit from this technology to the extent of...

Demographic, socio-political and economic pressures have made eating meat an unsustainable practice for the long term. However, meat substitutes have proved unpopular, owing to social norms and a lack of trust; some alternatives also contribute heavily to climate change. Could microbial protein be a sustainable alternative to meat that not only solves these multidimensional pressures but also contributes actively to reversing climate change?

The rapid growth of genetic databases worldwide, coupled with fast-decreasing costs and increased technological speed, has raised the possibility of every human genome on Earth being sequenced within this century. This brings to the forefront ethical and legal questions on data privacy and ownership. While a world genomic database would revolutionise preventive medicine and research, new forms of surveillance, discrimination and power imbalances could emerge. The global interplay between the...