Abstract Although foresight has played a central role in the history of European integration since its inception in the 1950s, it has not always had the same meaning, nor has it always been used in the same political way. This article looks at the genesis and development of foresight on a European scale between 1950 and 2020, analysing it as a specific public policy: such a perspective aims to highlight the differentiated relationships to time and future, the different conceptions of the respective roles of administration, politics and science, and the forms of competence on which successive foresight policies are based. It also enables us to identify the institutional and political factors that explain its development, and the particular forms it takes.