Next week, France will present its European partners with its vision of the citizens' consultations aiming to democratise the fledgling reflection on the future of the European Union in the run-up to the European elections of spring 2019.
On Friday 15 December, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, said that he had outlined the method he was proposing for the consultations the evening before. “A document, a set of specifications was shared with all of the member states”, he said. The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, will collect comments in the near future in order to finalise a method in the first quarter of next year and move forward together on this new and necessary procedure before the summer, he added.
The first consultations are expected to be held in April, following general elections in Italy and Hungary, for instance, and continue into the autumn, according to a French diplomatic source. Apart from changing the initial name of "citizens' conventions", which was felt to be overly institutional, the aim is to keep the process as simple and decentralised as possible whilst involving civil society and the social partners. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)