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The Committees of the Future to cooperate regularly

Published 10/14/2022 9:00 AM
Text "World Summit of the Committees of the Future"

The Committees of the Future to cooperate regularly

The Committees of the Future issued a joint statement with which they want to ensure that the just started international parliamentary dialogue on the future will continue. The World Summit of the Committees of the Future forms an international forum for parliamentary discussion on future policy. The committees that have a mandate in their own parliaments to deal with long-term issues will meet in the summits. This forum provides the opportunity for parliamentarians to discuss transnational issues which require increased future-orientation in decision-making. The joint statement encourages the creation of new committees of the future in different parliaments.

The World Summit of the Committees of the Future was organized in Helsinki on 12-13 October 2022. It gathered, for the first time, parliamentary committees whose responsibilities relate to reviewing long-term future developments. In addition to Finland, committees from the following parliaments participated in the Summit: Austria, Canada, Chile, Estonia, Iceland, Lithuania, Paraguay, the Philippines, Poland, Thailand, Uruguay, and Vietnam.

The goal of the World Summit was to introduce the future committees of different countries to each other and to identify topics that the committees want to discuss together. In their speeches, the committees of different parliaments highlighted themes they consider important, such as the future of democracy, young people's faith in the future, the future of artificial intelligence, the possibilities of technology in a fair green transition and the promotion of an equal future. In addition, the committees discussed the principles by which the meetings will be continued. Furthermore, they decided to send the Joint Statement to all parliaments of the world so that a committee on the future would be established in as many of them as possible. It was stated at the meeting that, for example, there are no future committees in the parliaments of African countries yet.

The Committee for the Future of the Finnish Parliament wanted to remember Antti Rautakangas, who was a member of the Committee for the Future. At the beginning of this parliamentary term, Rautakangas hoped that the Committee “raised the bar" in all its work. Rautakangas died in 2019. The World Summit has been the most significant effort to advance international policy on the future in the Committee's history.

The Committee for the Future hosted the meeting. When it was founded in the Finnish Parliament in 1993, it was the world's first parliamentary committee dealing with future policy. Later, future committees have been established in other parliaments as well. 

The joint statement and other Summit material is available at the World Summit webpage: www.parliament.fi/world-summit-committees-future

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