12 EU Civil Society organisations call for a Conference on the Future of Europe that really makes a difference!

12 European civil society organisations unveil today their set of recommendations for a successful Conference on the Future of Europe. The recommendations emerged as an outcome of a series of brainstorming sessions between European civil society organisations held in autumn 2019. 

The proposal for a “European Conference on the Future of Europe” initially put forward by President Emmanuel Macron and then taken up by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, represents a great opportunity to reshape the future of the European Union.

The CSOs’ common key recommendations for the Conference on the Future of Europe are:

1. An open mandate for the Conference, aimed at developing policy and institutional proposals, as well as proposals for treaty change or a new treaty framework, if considered necessary.
2. A wide-ranging approach, looking at the scope of competences of the Union, the financing of Union policies and proposals for the democratic and efficient governance of those policies.
3. A democratic process with wide participation and deep deliberation with individual citizens and civil society organisations from across the Union, as well as accession candidate and eastern neighbourhood countries. 
4. A multi-step approach allowing individual citizens and civil society organisations to give input at different levels of expertise using digital tools and deliberative polling and engagement with institutional decision-makers.
5. A clear upfront commitment by the institutions of the Union, as well as National Governments to deliver legislative proposals on all policy recommendations and initiate Treaty changes on all proposals adopted by the Conference.

The full common recommendations can be found here, and they are supported by the following civil society organisations:

European Students’ Forum (AEGEE), European Association for Local Democracy (ALDA), Assembly of European Regions (AER), Civil Society Europe (CSE), Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the EU (COMECE), European Citizen Action Service (ECAS), European Youth Forum, Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum, Fondation EURACTIV, garagErasmus Foundation, Young European Federalists (JEF) and  the Union of European Federalists (UEF).