Has EU Reform Ended Before It Began? - Berlin Policy Journal - Blog

“Conference on the Future of Europe,”... if the commission and national governments get their way, it may be a useless exercise...

the European Parliament... would create ... citizens’ assemblies ... of up to 300 people each... give citizens specific questions to wrestle with... should result in major changes in how the EU works... resembles the Convention on the Future of the European Union...

Merkel ... terrified of ... treaty change ... prefer it to remain a purely public relations exercise...

Commission ... caught... between the ambition of Parliament and conservatism of Council... goes into little detail ... rejects ... citizen assemblies... should “build on the well-established citizens’ dialogues.” ... first focus on the EU’s headline policy ambitions ... seemingly less important strand would focus on structural issues...

more a listening exercise than talking... what citizens want, we will try to transpose this into policies ... Without asking citizens specific questions ... and rather just sitting back and saying, “Tell me what you want,” the feedback is likely to result in an unusable cacophony of voices...