At the European Summit on 12 and 13 December, the Heads of State or Government of the European Union will discuss the Conference on the Future of Europe, in accordance with a Franco-German request (see EUROPE 12377/3).
The Twenty-Seven will ask the Croatian Presidency of the Council of the EU to prepare a common position on “the content, scope, composition and functioning of such a conference”, according to a draft of the summit conclusions dated 2 December.
For European leaders, the Conference's work should lead to “concrete results” for the benefit of citizens, particularly as regards the development of European policies in the medium and long term.
The conclusions also underline the importance of having an “inclusive process”, which involves all Member States and promotes cooperation with the other European institutions.
On Wednesday 4 December, during a debate in the European Parliament's Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO), the Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Šuica, considered that the first step in the process was to develop an “interinstitutional agreement” between the Commission, Parliament and the EU Council to establish the principles and objectives of the forthcoming conference.
This conference should start no later than spring 2020 and lead to first results in the summer on the issue of democratisation of European elections, with the main theme being the process of top candidates ('Spitzenkandidat'), combined with the establishment of transnational lists by European political groupings. Such lists would allow personalities to be elected to the European Parliament by voters from across the EU, and for the Spitzenkandidat from the winning political grouping to take over the presidency of the Commission.
By choosing Ursula von der Leyen (see EUROPE 12287/1), the European Council in July refused to appoint one of the top European political groups to head the European Commission, particularly because none of them had a political majority in the European Parliament.
French President Emmanuel Macron also argued that the Spitzenkandidat process was only valid with transnational lists. However, in 2014, the European Parliament succeeded in putting pressure on the European Council to make the Spitzenkandidat from the European People's Party, Jean-Claude Juncker, who enjoyed strong support from the European Parliament, President of the Commission.
“If we renamed the Spitzenkandidat concept, we would be able to sell it better. Sorry, but that sounds horrible to my Czech ears!", said Commissioner Věra Jourová, who will be specifically responsible for following the debates of the conference on the democratisation of the European elections.
As the upcoming conference is intended to be different from all the others, one of the thorny issues will be to provide a mechanism to involve citizens on a representative basis.
But, at this stage, “we still do not know how to select citizens”, said Ms Šuica, advocating a bottom-up process with events in all Member States, as well as the use of new technologies to increase participation.
Ms Jourová also warned against the lack of effects after the results of the Conference had been submitted. “It would be a horrible failure if we did not work on the answers” of citizens to the questions we want to ask them, “if we did not act in response”, she said.
The AFCO Committee will adopt, on Monday 9 December, its contribution to the draft resolution on the Conference on the Future of Europe that Parliament's plenary will adopt in January (see EUROPE 12375/7, 12372/4).
See the draft conclusions of the European Summit: http://bit.ly/36dqRyX (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)