16 December 2021
The Conference on the Future of Europe as an Institutional Illusion
The Conference on the Future of Europe is currently underway on the basis of the joint Declaration of 10 March 2021. Nine months after the Joint Declaration there is ample evidence from the Conference that allows us to assess this institutional event. The Conference might best be described as a campaign to stimulate public interest for EU politics. It is clear that the Conference has neither the legal basis nor the institutional character to address the Union's structural problems in the face of great challenges. Continue reading >>
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09 October 2021
Roots of the EU Tree
The European Citizens’ Panels (ECP) are part of the Conference on the Future of Europe and provide randomly selected citizens with the opportunity to articulate their visions of the EU. The author participated in the second ECP and points out the risk of separating EU values from each other by locating them in different deliberation streams. Continue reading >>30 June 2021
Neglected Actors at the Conference on the Future of Europe
Judges are prominent actors with a significant impact on European integration. Yet, no references to them appear in the Joint Declaration on the Conference on the Future of Europe. This corresponds to a view, unsustainable in the age of extensive access to information, that judges sit in ivory towers and speak exclusively through their decisions that other actors then explain to the broader public. Continue reading >>
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14 May 2021
Our European Society and Its Conference on the Future of Europe
9 May 2021 saw the official launch of the Conference on the Future of Europe. 70 years of Europeanization have not yielded a European people, the treaty maker is saying, nor – God forbid – created a European federal state. They have, however, given rise to a European society. Continue reading >>
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16 March 2021
The Conference on the Future of Europe – Finally, an opportunity for more top-down bureaucracy?
On Wednesday, 10 March, the Presidents of the European Institutions signed the Joint Declaration on the Future of Europe. It establishes a Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE), which is advertised as a "citizens-focused, bottom-up exercise”. However, from the start, the Conference has been everything but that. Continue reading >>
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