Conference on the future of Europe: Let civil society have its say!

We are a community of academics coming from different disciplines ... closely studied and contributed to previous (failed) institutional attempts ... to rethink the EU ...

express our deepest concerns about the many unintended consequences stemming from ... the Conference on the future of Europe... raising expectations it can’t easily deliver on, the Conference may erode citizens’ trust...

top-down approach... defies its own purpose... without unleashing the mobilizing potential of European civil society the Conference will never be owned and felt by citizens...

six citizens’ assemblies ... agoras in the Parliament’s proposal ... downgraded to citizen’s dialogues in the Commission’s blueprint ... will deliberate on a set of predefined policy areas... remains unclear how the agoras ... conclusions will feed into the work and final conclusions ... how feedback between decision-makers and citizens ... takes place, and how disagreements are resolved... citizens are not involved in agenda setting...

the Parliament proposal young people are given a dedicated agora... [risking] perceived as ‘youth-washing’ and treating young people as an accessory ...

methodological vagueness and improvisation ... contrasts with ... well-established democratic innovations ... across the continent... there is a thriving literature on the state of European democracy and some of its possible fixes. Yet the current proposals... blissfully neglect such a wealth of analysis...

Europe needs ... a permanent method feeding the day-to-day EU decision-making. Citizen participation needs institutionalization, not on-off or ad hoc processes...our concrete recommendations...:

Give civil society a leading role...

Ensure ... real deliberation can take place between citizens, and between citizens and elected decision makers and governments... allowing contradictory debate and compromise ...

Give young people a decisive role in the Conference...

involve the practitioners, academics and specialists in civil society participation in the design and running of the Conference...

commit that this is a decisive and long-term evolution in the way European democracy works, and not a one-off exercise.