In the shadow of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, something unprecedented took place in the EU from April 2021 to May 2022: the Conference on the Future of Europe. In March 2021, the presidents of three EU institutions, the Parliament, the Council and the Commission, issued their Joint Declaration on the Conference on the Future of Europe. Its aim was to enable Europeans to "voice their expectations of the European Union and play a greater role in shaping the future of the Union." (1)
A central component of the Future Conference was a multilingual digital platform. Citizens were able to post their contributions and share their ideas here. This platform also incorporated suggestions and results from several thousand events with around 650,000 participants. This was also invited as part of the conference. The joint declaration called on all political levels, from the municipality to the EU, as well as civil society players, to participate. In the end, 17,000 ideas ended up on the platform.
Another central building stone was also a novelty at European level: the organisation of four European Citizens' Forums, each with 200 participants over three weekends. The participants were selected at random and were intended to represent the entire population of the EU - with a particular focus on young people. The topics discussed during the four forums resulted from the discussions on the aforementioned digital platform.
On Europe Day 2022, 9 May, a summary of 49 proposals and 200 measures on nine topics was presented to the three EU institutions at the end of the Future Conference. The thematic areas concern: a stronger economy, social justice; employment; education, culture; youth and sport; digital transformation; democracy in Europe; values and rights, rule of law, security; climate change and environment; health; the EU in the world and migration.
In fact, each of the EU institutions involved has reported on the status of realisation of the citizens' proposals and drawn its conclusions. The European Parliament already triggered the procedure to amend the EU Treaties on 9 June 2022. (2) The Commission reports on its website that it has "taken action on almost 95 per cent of the measures proposed by the Conference that fall within its competence and do not contradict the Treaties." (3). Three further citizens' forums have already been held on topics such as food waste, virtual worlds and learning mobility abroad. On 7 December 2023, the European Council reported on the progress of the proposals on the nine topics. On page 4, it states that the implementation of only 5 per cent of the measures requires a treaty amendment. (4)
In an article by the think tank Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (5), the authors draw the following conclusions from the conference: Firstly, citizens wanted the EU to take on more responsibility and present a more united front in the world. It should use its strengths, i.e. its regulatory power and economic policy, to drive forward the Green Deal and digitalisation transformation projects. Secondly, citizens want more transparency and more opportunities for participation. As far as amending the treaties is concerned, the citizens' proposals focus on expanding majority decisions and increasing the EU's ability to act, as well as a limited expansion of its competences.
The European citizens' movement Pulse of Europe, which was founded in Frankfurt am Main, has also contributed to the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) in various ways. On the one hand, it organised campaigns and its deputy chair Stephanie Hartung was able to give a speech at the closing event on 9 May 2022. When asked by Eurolandpost, the citizens' movement summarised: "Basically, we consider the CoFoE to be a successful experiment to strengthen European citizen participation. Various new participation formats have emerged from the CoFoE. Otherwise, of course, there is a lot of room for improvement."
- https://www.eu-zukunftskonferenz.at/user/documents/cofe_report_de_with-annexes_final.pdf ,
Konferenz zur Zukunft Europas
BERICHT ÜBER DAS ENDGÜLTIGE ERGEBNIS Mai 2022, 346 Seiten,
Seiten 5 bis 15, Zitat aus der Einleitung
- https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/de/press-room/20220603IPR32122/parlament-lost-verfahren-zur-anderung-der-eu-vertrage-aus
- https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/new-push-european-democracy/conference-future-europe_de
- https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-16054-2023-INIT/de/pdf
- https://www.swp-berlin.org/10.18449/2022A44/
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Original language German - error in the translation? - eurolandpost(at)gmx.eu
Translated by deepl