From crisis management to every-day legislation, governments and European policy-makers are often faced with the question of assessing public opinion preferences on policy solutions. Even though public opinion is often described as ‘constraining’ the action of policy-makers, just as often data on public preferences can enable or justify action from governments and the European Union. From policy design to impact assessment, public opinion analysis enters the policy process at different stages, and often with different outcomes. Recent methodological advances in survey research, such as the widespread use of policy experiments and the rapidly narrowing quality gap between in-person and online sampling are opening new horizons on the usefulness of public opinion research for policy-makers. In this event, we brought together panelists who are or have been engaged with embedding public opinion research into the process of policy design and evaluation, to share innovative practices, success stories, failed experiences, and ways forward to achieve a more responsive public policy formation process.