The ›Conference on the Future of Europe‹ – a push for European Democracy?

The Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), running from May 2021 until May 2022, is an ambitious experiment of transnational deliberative citizen participation: Citizens were chosen by lot (at least one man and one women of every member state and a minimum of 30 % of young people aged 16-25) and invited to deliberate about the future of Europe. Together with members of the European Parliament and national parliaments they discussed how the EU could become more democratic and more effective. The result are 49 proposals and over 200 measures, put together in a final report, officially handed over to representatives of the European institutions in Strassbourg on May 9 (“Europe Day”) 2022.  The Citizen Recommendations got a strong statement of support from Emmanuel Macron, as current president of the European Council, as well as from EP president Roberta Matsola and EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, but they face considerable barriers: if and how these recommendations are to be implemented, if a convention shall be called, to discuss and decide on Treaty changes, is up to the European institutions to decide now.

The Roundtable will discuss CoFoE’s challenges and chances, the role of European citizens and future prospects for European Democracy with participants and observers of the Conference.

Daniel Freund MEP (European Greens): member of the European Parliament for the Greens since 2019, observer in the Executive Board of the CoFoE and Member of its Plenary, President of the ‘Spinelli group’ (a network of federalist-minded Members of the European Parliament).

Stephanie Hartung (Pulse of Europe):
National citizen representative for Germany at the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), co-founder and member of executive board of Pulse of Europe e.V.

Daniela Vancic (CITIZENSTAKEOVEREUROPE & Democracy International)
European Program Manager, managing campaigns for strengthening direct democracy and citizen participation for Democracy International, and leading advocacy work of CTOE.

Dr. Constantin Schäfer (IFOK / KU Leuven)
Consultant for Citizen Participation in Europe (ifok GmbH) and Project Manager at the Conference on the Future of Europe, responsible for European Citizens Panels.
Postdoc Researcher at the Centre for Global Governance Studies (KU Leuven).

Remote participation via zoom:
Please register with:
sekretariat.seubert@soz.uni-frankfurt.de