The Annual Conference “2025. World Tendencies and National Security. Foresights. Challenges. Scenarios”

Abstract

The main theme of the sixth annual conference on global trends and national security, organized on January 23, 2025 by the National Library’s of Lithuania Strategic Forecasting Department and the Lithuanian Parliament’s Committee for the Future was regional policy and state resilience. In his welcoming address, the President of Lithuania, Gitanas Nausėda, noted that the relationship between regional policy and state resilience is one of the most important issues in Lithuania today, as the rapid growth of the country’s economy has led to a lack of attention to regional policy and an uneven distribution of the yield of growth. Ginas Dabašinskas. Metinė konferencija „2025-ieji. Pasaulinės tendencijos ir nacionalinis saugumas. Įžvalgos. Iššūkiai. Scenarijai“ 79 Vytautas Grubliauskas, Chairman of the Committee for the Future, reminded that the institutional framework for future insights in Lithuania is formed by several institutions, the Seimas Committee for the Future, the Seimas Chancellery and the Government Chancellery, the Government’s Strategic Analysis Center STRATA, the National Library’s of Lithuania Strategic Forecasting Department, Lithuanian universities, other research institutions and centers. Their role is important because of the increasing global and regional risks and challenges to the economy, social activities, and finances. Therefore, it makes the issue of the public sector’s and the entire state’s resilience to systemic threats especially relevant. The presentations focused on the need to activate regional policy in the search for institutional solutions, such as the establishment of a regional ministry. After discussing the experience of local government regulation in the EU and the challenges arising from the implementation of regional policy, it was concluded that global uncertainty is a reality in which we must act and make decisions, including existential ones. Therefore, the conference on future global trends and national security is necessary as a platform that allows politicians to hear experts and vice versa.